Spark Team Product Manager

Arkana Laboratories; Little Rock (AR); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Generous PTO

Health insurance

401(k) with match

Life insurance

Job summary

Arkana Laboratories in Little Rock, AR, seeks a Spark Team Product Manager to define and drive the front of our AI-native development funnel. You will own intake, conduct discovery with users and stakeholders, and frame engagements as testable questions with success and kill criteria.

As a founding member, you will shape the SPARK operating model, partner with engineers, and present recommendations to senior leadership, navigating ambiguity with structured decision making.

Qualifications

• Experience in product management, ideally healthcare, SaaS, or regulated environments.
• Ability to take prototypes/features to production and prune those that don’t deserve it.
• Comfort with autonomy and accountability in short, high-focus engagements.

Responsibilities

• Own intake and vetting of ideas surfaced across the company.
• Conduct discovery with end users and stakeholders to identify real problems.
• Frame engagements as testable questions with success/kill criteria.
• Scope proofs of concept with engineers to answer questions in weeks.
• Document advance/return/kill recommendations for senior leadership.
• Build and document the SPARK operating model and roadmap.

Skills

Product management

Autonomy

Leadership & communication

Discovery & facilitation

Job description

Who we are:

At Arkana Laboratories, everyone has an important role to fill. Come join us and be a part of a team dedicated to making life better for those who need it most.

This place is packed with super-smart people who do their best work together. We work hard every day to advance our understanding of disease and provide world-class care to our patients in hopes of leaving our corner of the world a little better than we found it. While we are committed to improving the lives of thousands of patients, we never lose sight of the realization that they are the reason we get to create change in our field.

Built on generosity, teamwork, and the freedom to try new things, we take great pride in our work. Great ideas come from everywhere in this company and we celebrate each success and failure for the opportunity it gives us to keep reaching. For more than twenty years after our founder, Dr. Patrick Walker, wrote his goals on the back of a napkin, our people, culture, and values have remained strong.

About the position

As the Spark Team Product Manager, you will be one half of SPARK, Arkana's two-person embedded unit that owns the front of our AI-native development funnel: deciding which ideas deserve to exist, shaping them into well-formed problems, and running proofs of concept rigorous enough to justify a kill or a commit. Working alongside the Spark Team Engineer on focused 2-to-4-week engagements across departments, you will convert raw ideas into tested concepts and close every engagement with a documented decision: advance, return, or kill. You are comfortable being measured on decisions, not output, and you bring structure to ambiguous situations quickly. This is a founding role, and the SPARK practice is yours to help define. Seniority is dictated by the candidate: the mandate is fixed, and the level, scope, and expectations that come with it are calibrated to the person who takes on the challenge. We would rather stretch the role around the right hire than filter them out with a years requirement.

Discovery & Engagement

• Own the intake and vetting process for ideas surfaced across the company
• Conduct discovery with end users and stakeholders to separate real problems from wishes
• Frame each engagement as a testable question with explicit success and kill criteria
• Partner with the Spark Team Engineer to scope proofs of concept that answer the question in weeks, not quarters
• Make and document advance/return/kill recommendations; present them to senior leadership
• Run engagement zero: triage the existing portfolio of vibe-coded applications
• Assess PHI/PII touchpoints, data boundaries, and adoption risk as part of every concept

Platform and Practice Building

• Identify opportunities to consolidate overlapping tools into a coherent platform narrative
• Build the SPARK operating model itself: intake, engagement cadence, and decision documentation
• Design and guide the roadmap for Arkana's operating system
• Other duties as assigned

You should have:

Required Experience:

• Product management experience, ideally in healthcare, SaaS, or regulated environments
• Demonstrated experience taking prototypes/features to production, and killing those that did not deserve it
• Comfort with autonomy and accountability in short, high-focus engagements

Required Technical Skills:

• Enough technical fluency to discuss APIs, data models, and deployment trade-offs without translation
• Sharp intuition around UI/UX
• Strong discovery and facilitation skills; able to surface real problems quickly

Required Leadership & Communication:

• Clear, concise communicator, comfortable presenting recommendations to senior leadership
• The judgment and standing to tell a department that its beloved tool should not exist
• Ability to bring structure to ambiguous situations quickly

What we offer:

We know that health is more than doctor visits and life is more than work. We work hard at Arkana but in turn provide competitive salaries and generous benefit offerings.

Specifically, we offer the following benefits to full-time employees:

• Competitive salary
• Generous paid time off and Paid Holidays
• Minimal cost health insurance for you and affordable options for your family
• 401(k) with immediate eligibility and match
• Company-paid life insurance
• Company-paid long term disability coverage
• Affordable vision and dental plans
• Flexible Spending Account or Health Savings Account availability
• Wellness plan and complimentary yoga classes
• Monthly in-office massages and employer-sponsored lunches