Founding Product Manager

Trayo; San Mateo (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Founding-level ownership

Hybrid flexibility

Direct access to founders

Equity

Job summary

Trayo is an AI-native startup in San Mateo seeking a product manager whose core strength is judgment. You will turn customer needs and rapid AI capabilities into concise, buildable specs and clear workflows.

You’ll write specs or live mocks that engineers love to build, with a strong UX/UI focus and hands-on use of AI tools. Expect a fast pace and hybrid collaboration with founders.

Qualifications

• PM with strong judgment who can articulate the right capability precisely.
• Writer of specs or live mocks that engineers can build.
• Strong UX/UI instincts for product appearance and feel.
• Hands-on with AI tools and understanding model capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Turn customer needs and AI capabilities into concise, buildable specs and workflows.
• Define exactly what the product behaves like, down to details.
• Collaborate with engineers to ship rapidly and maintain quality.

Skills

Judgment

Spec writing

UX/UI focus

AI-native

Fast-paced

Tools

AI tools

Job description

Here's what we've learned building an AI-native company with anexceptional engineering team: engineering speed is no longer theconstraint. When your team can ship in days, product becomes the bottleneck — not for lack of ideas or customer understanding, butbecause someone has to apply sharp product judgment and define exactlythe right capabilities, with clarity and precision.

That's the role. Discovery and problem identification are table stakes.The real work is turning customer needs and fast-moving AI capabilitiesinto concise, buildable specs and clear workflows — deciding whatmatters, cutting what doesn't, and defining how the product actuallybehaves down to the details.

You Are

• A PM whose core strength is judgment — you know which capability isthe right one, and you can articulate it precisely
• A writer of specs — or live mocks — engineers love: short,unambiguous, ready to build
• Strong on UX and UI — you have real instincts for how things shouldlook and feel, whether it's for an app or an MCP
• AI-native and hands-on — you use AI tools directly every day andunderstand what models can and can't do
• Fast — comfortable moving at the pace of an engineering team thatships constantly

What You Get

• Founding-level ownership and direct access to the founders — realinfluence over what Trayo becomes; your specs are what the teambuilds
• Competitive salary + meaningful equity
• Small team, high trust, real impact
• Hybrid flexibility; collaboration hub in San Mateo

About Us

We're a fast-moving, VC-backed startup building an AI-powered productfor enterprise teams. We work at the intersection of data, automation,and user-facing workflows, helping customers make faster,higher-confidence decisions.

Our founding team brings rare depth across both scale and startupexecution:

• Our CEO previously led multiple large-scale analytics services(hundreds of millions in ARR), owning P&L, product, and GTM, and helpedscale a major product from early stage through IPO. Her background spansenterprise software, go-to-market strategy, and AI/ML-driven data platforms.
• Our CTO is a multi-time founder with successful acquisitionsand deep technical leadership experience building developer products andbusiness software used by millions of customers.