Product Manager

Wizard Studios Inc; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Wizard, Inc. is seeking a seasoned product leader to own the editor roadmap for its AI-native video platform. You will work closely with Story's editors and beta customers, translating their needs into prioritized, well-specified work for engineers.

You will collaborate with engineers and designers, drawing on hands-on editing experience to ensure features align with real workflows and deadlines. This on-site San Francisco role emphasizes ownership and clear communication.

Qualifications

• Video editing and production experience with real productions and familiarity with major NLEs.
• Ability to define success metrics and prioritize builds based on evidence.
• Comfort following engineering discussion on codecs, color pipelines, or performance.
• Ability to ask good questions and connect product choices to editor workflows under deadlines.
• Concise, precise writing for specs, roadmaps, and updates.
• Demonstrated ownership and ability to move work forward independently.

Responsibilities

• Own the editor roadmap and keep priorities clear across parity, pro workflows, and agent features.
• Run discovery with Story editors and paid beta customers to identify pain points.
• Translate feedback and bug reports into ranked engineering work.
• Write specs and acceptance criteria grounded in edit, color, sound, and delivery workflows.
• Define success criteria for each release and assess after launch.
• Shape how Oz fits into professional workflows so editors maintain control.

Skills

Video editing

Product judgment

Technical fluency

User understanding

Clear writing

Ownership

Job description

Wizard is the AI-native platform for creative work, starting with professional video: a native C++ editor and headless media runtime that humans, agents, and developers all operate.

You've sat in the edit bay. Now decide what the editor of the future does next.

Why this role matters

Wizard ships roughly twice a day into Story's productions, our paid beta is onboarding studios with their own deadlines, and the requests never stop: parity features, pipeline asks, agent workflows, and whole new products like Wizard Headless, Wizlink cloud projects, and WizReview. Speed is not our constraint; choosing well is. We need someone who knows how editing and production really work to turn what editors say into a roadmap, and to say no to the rest.

About the role

You'll report to Jack Gardner, our Head of Product, and own the roadmap and priorities for the Wizard editor. You'll spend real time with Story's editors and beta customers, decide what gets built and in what order, and work daily with engineers, forward deployed engineers, and design to ship it. Your judgment comes from having done the work: cutting, finishing, or running productions yourself.

What you'll do

• Own the editor roadmap and keep priorities clear across parity, pro workflows, and agent features.

• Run discovery with Story editors and paid beta customers: watch sessions, find what slows them down, and decide what matters.

• Turn customer feedback, bug reports, and forward deployed engineering asks into clear, ranked work for engineering.

• Write specs and acceptance criteria that engineers can build from, grounded in real edit, color, sound, and delivery workflows.

• Define what success looks like for each release, and check it against usage and editor feedback after it ships.

• Help shape how Oz fits into professional workflows so editors keep control of every decision.

What you bring

• Video editing and production experience: you've cut, finished, or supervised real productions, and you know NLEs like Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Avid, or Final Cut Pro from the inside.

• Product judgment: you define what success looks like, test your assumptions, and use evidence to decide what to build, and what not to.

• Technical fluency: you can follow an engineering discussion about codecs, color pipelines, or performance, and ask the right question.

• User understanding: you ask good questions, uncover the real problem, and connect product choices to how people work under deadline.

• Clear writing: your specs, roadmaps, and updates are short, specific, and trusted.

• Ownership: you move work forward independently and follow through after launch.

Show us what you can do

We welcome different backgrounds. Evidence of a strong fit could include:

• Product management on pro creative or media software at Blackmagic Design, Apple Pro Apps, Adobe, Avid, Frame.io, Descript, Runway, or a company like them.

• Years as an editor, assistant editor, post supervisor, or producer, with a record of shaping the tools or workflows your team used.

• A product decision you made that changed how people worked, with what you learned from it.

You do not need a product manager title. We care about how well you understand editors, how you decide, and what you've shipped.

About Wizard

Every so often, a new technology redefines how stories get told: the printing press, the telephone, radio, the film camera, the cutting room, television, the digital camera, non-linear editing. We think we're at the start of the next one, and we intend to build the company that defines it.

Wizard is the AI-native platform for creative work, starting with the hardest creative workflow: professional video. In roughly six months, our team built a native C++ editor and a headless media runtime that humans, agents, and developers all operate. Oz, our agent, ingests footage at roughly 300× real time and edits at 30-60× real time, and every change it makes stays inspectable, editable, and reversible.

Our philosophy is creative as code: every decision editable, controllable, composable, never generative slop you regenerate and hope for the best. Controllability over convenience. Artist integrity over automation. Taste over throughput.

Our sister company is Story, a production company making video for frontier AI labs and deep-tech companies. We work closely with them: Story is our first customer and in-house design partner, and its editors cut real client work on Wizard every day.

Our team comes from Industrial Light & Magic, Netflix, Apple, Epic Games, Lucasfilm, Blizzard, and 2K. We work in person in San Francisco.

Compensation

The base salary range for this role is $160,000 - $210,000. Your final offer will depend on your experience, skills and level.