Staff Product Manager - San Francisco

Department: Global Product R&D Center

Location: San Francisco, CA

Employment Type: FullTime

About Plaud Inc.

Plaud is building the real-world AI interface for professionals to amplify intelligence, elevate productivity and performance, loved by over 2,000,000 users worldwide since 2023. With a mission to amplify human intelligence, Plaud captures, structures, and compounds the intelligence generated in conversations — so humans can think better, decide faster, and execute with clarity.

Plaud Inc. is a Delaware-incorporated, San Francisco-based company pushing the boundary of human–AI intelligence through a hardware–software combination. With full ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2, GDPR, EN18031, and HIPAA compliances, Plaud is committed to the highest standards of data security and privacy protection. To learn more about Plaud, please visit https://www.plaud.ai and follow along on Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Why You Should Join Us

Plaud is building the next generation intelligence infrastructure and interfaces to capture, extract, and utilize intelligence from what people say, hear, see, and think.

• Plaud is a bootstrapped, skyrocketing, profitable company with a $300M revenue run rate achieved in just three years.

• Define the next-gen paradigm for human-AI interaction.

• Gain exposure to cutting-edge AI for Pro tools and play a direct role in our global expansion.

• Work with passionate teammates who value innovation, collaboration, and customer success.

• Grow your career in a culture that champions continuous learning and fast career development.

• Market-competitive compensation, global exposure, and a vibrant, creativity-fueled work atmosphere.

What You Will Do

• Own the end-to-end product definition process for AI hardware products — from market research and user research through opportunity identification, product concept, PRD, cross-functional alignment, NPI milestones, and launch readiness — benchmarking requirements and quality standards against SOTA consumer AI hardware (e.g., leading wearable, recording, and productivity device categories).

• Define the integrated hardware-software-AI product experience: connect device capabilities, firmware behavior, AI features, mobile application, cloud services, and user interaction into one coherent end-to-end product journey, resolving gaps between hardware and software/AI feature definition before engineering execution begins.

• Lead structured product trade-off decisions on feature scope, BOM, manufacturability, cost, schedule, and user experience across Hardware Engineering, Firmware, AI, Industrial Design, Manufacturing, Operations, Marketing, and User Research — converting cross-functional discussions into clear decisions, owners, and next steps.

• Build and maintain the hardware product roadmap for assigned product lines, grounding prioritization in validated user needs, competitive differentiation, market opportunity, technical feasibility, and business impact; provide business cases for major product concepts and roadmap decisions.

• Establish repeatable product discovery and definition mechanisms — including user segmentation frameworks, scenario prioritization, PRD standards, and product decision criteria — that raise the quality bar across Plaud's hardware product organization and can scale across multiple product lines.

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of product management experience with significant ownership of consumer hardware, AI hardware, smart devices, wearables, IoT, audio/recording devices, or other complex hardware-software products — including end-to-end responsibility from 0-to-1 discovery through PRD, cross-functional alignment, and launch.

• Proven ability to write high-quality PRDs for products that combine hardware, firmware, software, cloud services, or AI-driven features — with PRDs that have been accepted and used as the authoritative reference by engineering, design, and operations teams.

• Demonstrated system-level product thinking: experience defining how device capabilities, firmware, AI, mobile app, cloud services, and user interaction work together as one coherent product, not as separate feature sets.

• Strong analytical and business judgment: ability to evaluate market potential, customer value, competitive differentiation, cost implications, technical feasibility, and launch readiness, and to make and defend trade-off decisions with real schedule and BOM consequences.

• Track record of driving cross-functional alignment and product decisions across Hardware Engineering, Firmware, Software, Industrial Design, Manufacturing, Operations, and Marketing without relying solely on formal authority.

• Demonstrated use of AI tools (e.g., LLM-assisted research synthesis, competitive scanning, PRD drafting) to accelerate product discovery and definition work — and a track record of sharing AI practices with cross-functional teams.

   

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building or scaling successful consumer electronics, AI hardware, wearable devices, smart audio/recording devices, or productivity devices — particularly products that integrate AI capabilities, voice interaction, speech recognition, LLM-powered workflows, or multimodal input.

• Experience defining products for global markets (North America, Europe, or other international consumer technology markets) and working across both 0-to-1 new product development and 1-to-N lifecycle iteration across multiple product generations or SKUs.

• Strong understanding of NPI processes, hardware development milestones (EVT/DVT/PVT), manufacturing constraints, supply chain considerations, BOM trade-offs, quality risks, and certification requirements; ability to connect product strategy with pricing, packaging, channel strategy, launch planning, and post-launch growth.
  

Required Tech/Soft skills

Tech skills:

• Tools and methods: proficiency with PRD and roadmap tooling (e.g., Confluence, Notion, Jira, or equivalent); familiarity with user research methods (customer interviews, usability studies, beta feedback analysis, support insight synthesis) and data analytics platforms to ground product decisions in evidence.

• Structured communication: ability to distill hardware-software-AI complexity into clear written narratives and decision frameworks for engineering, design, operations, and executive audiences — demonstrated by PRDs and roadmap documents that have served as the authoritative cross-functional reference.

• Ownership under ambiguity: operates effectively in fast-changing, high-growth environments where product scope, priorities, and constraints shift; drives decisions and closes open questions without waiting for complete information or formal authority.

What we offer

• Meaningful Ownership An Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) that gives a real stake in Plaud’s long-term success.

• High-Impact Environment Work in a fast-moving, product-driven environment where your ideas directly shape the future of AI productivity.

• Comprehensive Health & Retirement Benefits Top-tier medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents, supported by a generous employer subsidy, plus a 401(k) retirement plan with company matching for full-time employees.

• Time Off & Workplace Benefits Unlimited PTO, plus 13 paid holidays, 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave for all parents, a hybrid work model with a minimum of three in-office days per week, and access to high-quality office snacks, drinks, and equipment.

• Cutting-Edge AI Tools for Productivity Access to best-in-class AI tools, including Gemini, Claude Code, and other frontier AI systems to maximize engineering and execution efficiency.

• Best-in-Class Equipment Choice of top-spec laptops, high-performance workstation setups, and cutting-edge Plaud devices for all new hires.

• Team & Culture Annual company offsites, team events, and a culture that values craftsmanship, ownership, and velocity.

Disclaimer: Plaud is and will continue to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.