Founding Product Manager

Cooper; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary & equity

Medical, dental & vision insurance

401k with company match

Unlimited PTO

Job summary

Cooper is building an AI coworker for the insurance industry. We seek a product leader who can own the roadmap end‑to‑end, translate complex insurance workflows into actionable specs, and work closely with founders and engineers to ship impactful products that save time and reduce manual work.

Ideal candidates have 5+ years in product management at high‑growth companies, strong customer instincts, and a proven ability to operate in ambiguity while collaborating across engineering, sales, and

Qualifications

• 5+ years of product management experience at early‑stage or high‑growth company.
• Track record of shipping products that change how people work in complex workflows.
• Strong customer instincts to synthesize conversations into insights.
• Ability to define problems in ambiguity and move forward without a complete picture.
• Experience working closely with engineers and making technical tradeoffs.
• Excellent written communication; ability to distill complexity into a paragraph.

Responsibilities

• Own the product roadmap end-to-end from discovery to launch and iteration.
• Understand customer workflows by spending time with brokers, carriers, and underwriters.
• Translate complex insurance processes into buildable specs for engineers and customers.
• Define and track adoption, time saved, retention metrics to guide prioritization.
• Shape how Cooper’s AI agents behave and integrate into existing tools and workflows.
• Build the product culture and establish how to communicate with customers and ship with speed.

Skills

PM experience (5+ yrs)

Customer instincts

Ambiguity handling

Written communication

Cross-functional collaboration

AI / automation background

Tools

CRMs

Email clients

Agency management systems

Job description

About Cooper AI

Cooper is an AI coworker for the insurance industry. Getting a business insured involves mountains of paperwork: filling out repetitive forms, re‑typing the same information into one insurance company’s website after another, and comparing offers by hand. Cooper does that busywork automatically, right inside the tools people already use, so brokers and their teams can focus on advising clients instead of pushing paper. We’re a small team with deep insurance roots, teaching AI to do real, trusted work in a massive, overlooked industry.

Backed by Lightspeed, General Catalyst, and Valor, Cooper AI is building from the ground up to modernize a $1T+ global insurance industry.

What You’ll Do

• Own the product roadmap end-to-end — from discovery through launch and iteration — in close partnership with founders and engineering
• Get deep into customer workflows: spend time with brokers, carriers, and underwriters to understand the real pain points, not just the surface-level asks
• Translate complex, messy insurance processes into clear, buildable product specs that engineers can execute and customers can immediately use
• Define and track the metrics that matter — adoption, time saved, retention — and use them to sharpen prioritization decisions
• Work directly in the AI product layer: help shape how Cooper’s AI agents behave, what they automate, and how they fit into existing tools and workflows, including getting hands‑on with building agents and writing code when needed
• Build the product culture at Cooper — establish how we talk to customers, how we evaluate ideas, and how we ship with speed and discipline
• Partner with sales and customer success to close the loop between what we promise and what we deliver, feeding insights back into the roadmap

What You’ll Bring

• 5+ years of product management experience, with a meaningful portion at an early‑stage or high‑growth company where you shaped the direction — not just executed a plan
• A track record of shipping products that changed how people work, ideally in a domain involving complex professional workflows (insurance, fintech, legal, healthcare, or similar)
• Strong customer instincts — you can run a discovery call, synthesize 10 conversations into a clear insight, and know the difference between what customers say and what they actually need
• Comfort operating in ambiguity: you can define the problem when no one else has, and move forward without a complete picture
• Experience working closely with engineers and a genuine appreciation for technical tradeoffs — you can hold your own in architecture conversations without pretending to be an engineer
• Excellent written communication — you write specs, briefs, and strategy memos that others want to read, and you can distill complexity into a paragraph
• A builder’s mentality: low ego, high ownership, obsessed with outcomes over process
• Background building AI or automation products, particularly in enterprise or workflow‑heavy contexts where the human‑AI handoff is nuanced

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in insurance, reinsurance, or adjacent financial services — you understand how a submission flows, what a BOR is, or why E&O coverage matters
• Experience at a company that went through a 0→1 phase — you’ve built product infrastructure (processes, templates, rituals) from scratch, not just inherited it
• Familiarity with integrations‑first products: tools that live inside other tools (CRMs, email clients, agency management systems) rather than replacing them
• Quantitative background or strong comfort with data — you can pull your own queries, run cohort analyses, and sanity‑check dashboards without relying on a data team

Benefits

• Competitive salary & equity
• Medical, dental & vision insurance
• Monthly wellness stipend
• 401k with company match
• Unlimited PTO
• Company‑sponsored lunch 5x per week
• Off sites, happy hours, and team‑building events

Compensation Range: $180K – $220K