Principal Product Manager

BetterUp; Arlington (VA); Hybrid; USD 213,000 - 266,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Access to BetterUp coaching

Flexible paid time off

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Learning and Development stipend

Company-wide summer & winter breaks

Job summary

A leading coaching and development firm in Arlington is seeking a Product Lead to own product areas and drive product-market fit. The ideal candidate should have over 8 years of experience in product management, with a strong focus on AI tools and customer engagement. This role emphasizes autonomy and urgency, seeking an individual who thrives in dynamic environments. Benefits include access to personal coaching, competitive compensation, and flexible work arrangements.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in product management or related roles.
• Experience with product-market fit and diagnosing issues.
• Background in B2B2C product environments.
• Direct exposure to enterprise customers.

Responsibilities

• Own a product area and drive product-market fit.
• Engage with stakeholders and build trust.
• Prototype demos and run hypothesis-driven experiments.
• Lead a cross-functional team to realize product vision.

Skills

Product management

AI tools proficiency

Customer-centric development

Cross-functional collaboration

Strategic thinking

Tools

Figma Make

Cursor

Replit

Claude

Job description

Let’s face it, a company whose mission is human transformation better have some fresh thinking about the employer/employee relationship.

We do. We can’t cram it all in here, but you’ll start noticing it from the first interview.

Even our candidate experience is different. And when you get an offer from us (and accept it), you get way more than a paycheck. You get a personal BetterUp Coach, a development plan, a trained and coached manager, the most amazing team you’ve ever met (yes, each with their own personal BetterUp Coach), and most importantly, work that matters.

This makes for a remarkably focused and fulfilling work experience. Frankly, it’s not for everyone. But for people with fire in their belly, it’s a game‑changing, career‑defining, soul‑lifting move.

Join us and we promise you the most intense and fulfilling years of your career, doing life‑changing work in a fun, inventive, soulful culture.

If that sounds exciting—and the job description below feels like a fit—we really should start talking.

We are a hybrid company with a focus on in‑person collaboration when necessary. Employees are expected to be available to work from one of our office hubs at least two days per week, or eight days per month. Our US hub locations include: Austin, TX; New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA; and the Washington, DC metro area. If this is a role based in Europe, our Europe hub locations are London, UK and Amsterdam, NL. Please ensure you can realistically commit to this structure before applying.

The Opportunity

This role is a single‑threaded Product Lead: you own a product area end‑to‑end, drive product‑market fit, and operate as the Mini‑Founder CEO of your domain. This is a builder‑operator role for someone who thrives in ambiguity, ships with urgency, and treats AI as their primary tool.

What You Own

• Carry an opinionated 3‑year product vision and translate it into a rolling 3‑week execution plan. Own product‑market fit — if it’s not selling, that’s your problem to diagnose and fix.
• Spend 50%+ of your time external‑facing: solution design sessions, product demos, and strategic conversations with enterprise buyers and end‑users. Build trust and credibility with key executive stakeholders.
• Prototype working demos with AI tools (Claude, Cursor, Replit, Figma Make) before engineering spends a sprint. Run hypothesis‑driven experiments; kill what isn’t working and redirect without drama.
• Decide and move with imperfect information. You don’t wait for alignment, permission, or consensus — you listen, synthesize, decide, and act. When you’re wrong, you course‑correct fast. You never stall.
• Lead a cross‑functional pod (PM/GPM, PMM Lead, GTM Lead) with an embedded R&D team (Engineering Lead, Design Lead, Product Analyst, TPM). Set the product direction; your partners execute against your vision with productive tension. You will ensure science‑backed practices in the experience working with BetterUp Labs, and deliver real outcomes aligned to our People Insights Consultants and Partner Value teams.
• Ensure your product fits into the broader portfolio — leveraging shared platform capabilities, aligning roadmaps with peer product leaders, and driving synergies that enhance the value of the entire platform.
• Define and track product success metrics, ensuring the product delivers measurable business value. Communicate progress against outcomes and facilitate risk discussions with leadership.

Experience

What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years in product management or related roles, including at least 4 years leading product direction at the team or product‑area level.
• Demonstrated ownership of product‑market fit — you’ve been the person responsible for diagnosing why something isn’t landing, changing course, and making it work. Not just shipping features, but finding the fit.
• Experience building products in B2B2C environments — you understand how to sell to enterprise buyers while building for the end‑users those buyers serve. You’ve navigated the tension between buyer requirements and user experience.
• Direct, sustained customer exposure in enterprise contexts — you’ve been in the room with economic buyers, built those relationships yourself, and used that signal to drive product direction.
• Domain expertise in organizational transformation, human transformation, talent intelligence, or related fields is a plus.

Skills & Competencies

• Relentless agency. You have an internal locus of control — when something isn't working, you own it and fix it rather than pointing to external factors or waiting for someone else to act. Humility to know what you don't know; relentlessness to figure it out anyway.
• Exceptional executive presence and storytelling ability, with a knack for building trust and influencing stakeholders at all levels.
• Strong product vision and strategic thinking, with a history of delivering impactful results in complex, multi‑stakeholder environments.
• Product taste. You have an instinct for what good looks like — in the product experience, in the positioning, in how your product shows up in the market. You can guide the marketing and branding of your products, not just the roadmap.
• Deep expertise in customer‑centric product development, with a focus on solution design and innovation.
• Outstanding cross‑functional collaboration skills, with the ability to align diverse teams (Engineering, Design, Sales, Services) toward shared goals.
• Effective team leadership, mentoring, and people management skills.
• AI‑native fluency. You build working prototypes and functional demos using AI tools (Claude, Cursor, Replit, Figma Make) before engineering spends a sprint. You can modify prompts, adjust UI flows, and run data analyses without filing a ticket. This is your default operating method, not a novelty.

Preferred Backgrounds

• Former founders or early employees at high‑growth startups — people who have lived the zero‑to‑one journey and thrived in the chaos.
• Builder PMs or Commercial PMs from B2B2C or enterprise SaaS environments — people whose superpower is either vision + build or deep customer intimacy.
• Expertise in organizational transformation, human transformation, talent intelligence, or related fields.
• Solution design experience — whether from consulting, customer‑facing product roles, or implementation work — where you were personally in the room shaping what gets built with the buyer.

Why This Role

• You’ll own a product area inside a platform that enterprises are building their talent strategy on. The surface area for impact is enormous.
• You’ll work directly with customers — not behind layers of account management. If that’s not appealing, this isn’t the right role.
• You’ll operate with real autonomy. We’re looking for people who want ownership and ambiguity, not clearer lanes and more consensus.
• You’ll build in an AI‑native environment where prototyping with agents, compressing cycle times, and shipping fast are expected, not exceptional.
• Our stakeholder complexity — members, coaches, enterprise buyers, alliances — is a feature for the right person: more surface area, more interesting problems, more leverage.

AI at BetterUp

Our team thrives at the intersection of human expertise and AI capability. As an AI‑forward company, adaptation and continuous learning are part of our daily work. We're looking for teammates who are excited to evolve alongside technology – people who experiment boldly, share their discoveries openly, and help define best practices for AI‑augmented work. These professionals thoughtfully integrate AI into their work to deliver exceptional results while maintaining the human judgment and creativity that drives real innovation. During our interview process, you’ll have opportunities to showcase how you harness AI to learn, iterate, and amplify your impact.

Benefits

• Access to BetterUp coaching; one for you and one for a friend or family member
• A competitive compensation plan with opportunity for advancement
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Flexible paid time off
• Per year:
  • All federal/statutory holidays observed
  • 4 BetterUp Inner Workdays (https://www.betterup.co/inner-work)
  • 5 Volunteer Days to give back
  • Learning and Development stipend
  • Company wide Summer & Winter breaks
• Year‑round charitable contribution of your choice on behalf of BetterUp
• 401(k) self contribution

We are dedicated to building diverse teams that fuel an authentic workplace and sense of belonging for each and every employee. We know applying for a job can be intimidating, please don’t hesitate to reach out — we encourage everyone interested in joining us to apply.

BetterUp Inc. provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, genetics, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status. In addition to federal law requirements, BetterUp Inc. complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.

At BetterUp, we compensate our employees fairly for their work. Base salary is determined by job‑related experience, education/training, residence location, as well as market indicators. The range below is representative of base salary only and does not include equity, sales bonus plans (when applicable) and benefits. This range may be modified in the future.

The base salary range for this role is as follows:

• New York City and San Francisco: $236,000 - $296,000
• Austin and Arlington: $213,000 - $266,000

Protecting your privacy and treating your personal information with care is very important to us, and central to the entire BetterUp family. By submitting your application, you acknowledge that your personal information will be processed in accordance with your Applicant Privacy Notice. If you have any questions about the privacy of your personal information or your rights with regards to your personal information, please reach out to [e-mail]