Full-Time Portfolio Product Manager / Fractional CTO

Plan Left; United States; Remote; USD 170,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Plan Left is seeking a highly capable Product Manager who can lead a remote team while performing hands-on product work. You will own quality and direction for new products across a portfolio, with about 5 hours per week supporting our digital marketing agency’s technical needs.

Work spans TypeScript/JavaScript, AWS, and mobile app releases. You will bridge business ideas and technical specs, manage backlogs, and oversee App Store and Google Play submissions.

Qualifications

• Proven Engineering Leadership: 5+ years of experience managing remote software engineering teams, running agile sprint cycles, and actively driving hiring strategies.
• Deep Coding Expertise: 10+ years of hands-on full-stack development (React, TypeScript, Node.js, Supabase/PostgreSQL).
• AI-Augmented Workflow Competency: Active, practical experience using AI code creation or agent tools to speed up prototyping and delivery workflows.
• Product Mindset: Strong UI/UX awareness, product intuition, and the ability to think like a tech founder.
• Communication: Exceptional English communication skills, written and verbal, with a proven ability to coordinate effectively with international startup teams and founders.
• A Tester's Eye: You find bugs other people miss, and you write down how to reproduce them so a developer can fix them fast.
• Spec and Backlog Skills: You turn a rough product idea into a clear spec and a prioritized backlog.
• Platform Familiarity: Experience with AWS and with getting a mobile app through App Store and Google Play review.
• Industry Experience: Experience working on SaaS or marketing technology products.
• Cross-Platform Mobile: React Native, Capacitor, or another way to ship one codebase to both app stores.
• Startup Technical Leadership: Experience as a fractional CTO, agency tech lead, or startup technical founder.
• AI Builder Handoffs: Experience moving a product from an AI app builder into a production codebase.
• Marketing Technology: Familiarity with analytics, tag management, and CRM integrations.

Responsibilities

• Testing: write test cases from acceptance criteria, test on web and real iOS/Android devices, sign off releases when quality is met.
• Product Ownership: end-to-end ownership for new features, manage backlog, submissions and release schedules for mobile apps.
• Rapid AI Prototyping: direct AI-assisted workflows to prototype features and hand off to production codebase.
• Hands-on Architecture and Code Review: perform technical reviews and refine code when AI tools fall short.
• Team Leadership and Construction: hire, structure, mentor remote teams, and set high technical standards.
• Interview Stakeholders and Team: translate feedback into backlog items and clear requirements.
• Agency Support: handle AWS accounts, hosting, and technical needs for client projects (~5 hours/week).

Skills

Engineering Leadership

Full-stack Dev

AI Augmented Workflow

Product Mindset

English Communication

Bug Detection

Spec & Backlog

AWS & App Store

SaaS Marketing Tech

Cross-Platform Mobile

Startup Technical Leadership

AI Builder Handoffs

Marketing Analytics

Tools

Lovable

Cursor

Windsurf

v0

Job description

Overview

We are hiring a product manager who can lead people and also do the hands-on product work themselves. You will own quality and direction for new products across a portfolio of companies. About 5 hours per week goes to helping our digital marketing agency with technical needs. The work happens in TypeScript and JavaScript stacks, with AWS and mobile app releases as regular parts of the week. This role fits a highly capable person who is equally comfortable managing a remote team and testing a build on their own phone.

About Us

New products here start on Lovable and similar platforms so we can test them fast. The ones that work get taken over with time, which means moving the code, the infrastructure, and the app store accounts into our own hands. This role is how that handoff happens.

What You Will Do

• - Make Sure Stakeholders Never Find a Bug. You test all work before it reaches a stakeholder. That means writing test cases from the acceptance criteria, testing on web and on real iOS and Android devices, and signing off on each release only when it holds up.
• - Product Ownership. You own product management end to end for new features and emerging products, bridging the gap between raw business ideas and technical engineering specs. You write the acceptance criteria, keep each backlog in priority order, and manage App Store and Google Play submissions, review responses, and release schedules for our mobile apps.
• - Rapid AI Prototyping and Development. You direct our AI-assisted workflows (Lovable, Cursor, and emerging AI agents) to spin up and validate feature prototypes quickly. Then you orchestrate the handoff to full engineering production, including the call on when a product has outgrown its starter platform and needs to move to our own codebase and AWS setup.
• - Hands-on Architecture and Code Review. You stay close enough to the code to perform technical reviews, diagnose build bottlenecks, and directly program code overrides or refinements when AI generation tools hit their limits.
• - Team Leadership and Construction. You help hire, structure, and scale our internal development organization. You mentor and train remote development teams, set high technical standards, and lead code reviews so AI-generated output is clean, type-safe, and scalable. You also write job descriptions and screen and interview developers and testers, so work that sits with contractors today can move in-house.
• - Interview Stakeholders and the Team. You talk regularly with stakeholders to learn what they need and with developers to learn where they are stuck, then turn what you hear into clear backlog items.
• - Support the Agency (About 5 Hours per Week). You take on the agency's technical needs, including AWS accounts, hosting, access, software costs, and the technical side of client projects.

Tech Stack

• - React, TypeScript, and Node.js, front end and back end
• - Supabase and PostgreSQL for application back ends and databases
• - AWS for hosting and infrastructure
• - Data warehouse storage for reporting and analytics
• - AI-assisted development with Lovable, Cursor, Windsurf, v0, and emerging AI agents, where most new products begin
• - WordPress for marketing sites, hosted on Cloudways
• - iOS and Android app releases through the App Store and Google Play

Requirements

• - Proven Engineering Leadership: 5+ years of experience managing remote software engineering teams, running agile sprint cycles, and actively driving hiring strategies or organization building.
• - Deep Coding Expertise: 10+ years of hands-on full-stack development experience (React, TypeScript, Node.js, and Supabase/PostgreSQL). You have the technical authority to audit other developers' work and enforce structural code quality.
• - AI-Augmented Workflow Competency: Active, practical experience using AI code creation or agentic tools (Lovable, Cursor, Windsurf, v0, or similar platforms) to speed up application prototyping and delivery workflows.
• - Product Mindset: Strong UI/UX awareness, product intuition, and the ability to think like a tech founder. You spot product gaps and propose solutions proactively, without needing detailed design direction.
• - Communication: Exceptional English communication skills, written and verbal, with a proven ability to coordinate effectively with international startup teams and founders.
• - A Tester's Eye: You find bugs other people miss, and you write down how to reproduce them so a developer can fix them fast.
• - Spec and Backlog Skills: You turn a rough product idea into a clear spec and a prioritized backlog.
• - Platform Familiarity: Experience with AWS and with getting a mobile app through App Store and Google Play review.
• - Industry Experience: Experience working on SaaS or marketing technology products.
• - Cross-Platform Mobile: React Native, Capacitor, or another way to ship one codebase to both app stores.
• - Startup Technical Leadership: Experience as a fractional CTO, agency tech lead, or startup technical founder.
• - AI Builder Handoffs: Experience moving a product from an AI app builder into a production codebase.
• - Marketing Technology: Familiarity with analytics, tag management, and CRM integrations.

Nice to Have

• - A deep background in marketing and sales

Hours and Language

Fluent English, spoken and written, is required. You will work a combination of US and overseas hours so you overlap with our US stakeholders and with developers in other time zones.

How We Work

• - You carry out direction without needing a manager to check on you, so your team does not have to micro-manage you.
• - You learn from the first mistake and do not need to be told the same thing twice.
• - If a deadline will slip, you tell the team before the deadline date.
• - You give and receive constructive feedback
• - You talk to people directly instead of about them, and you act with honesty and integrity.
• - You are accountable. You own your results and your commitments from start to finish.
• - You are coachable. You ask for feedback, take it in, and change how you work because of it.

How the Role Grows

You start by taking ownership of quality and backlogs for our newest products, plus about 5 hours per week for the agency. As products mature and move off their starter platforms, you take on more of the product ownership. As we hire, you spend more time setting direction, building the team, and deciding what ships.