Sr. PM; Applications

Title: Senior Product Manager, Utility Applications

Company Name: Vibrant Planet

Location: US-based remote. Pacific or Mountain Time Zone required.

About Vibrant Planet

We are a team of leaders in science, forestry, policy, and tech on a mission to reduce catastrophic fire impacts to communities and ecosystems. Vibrant Planet's software platform monitors and forecasts wildfire and climate risk and helps our customers (e.g. CAL FIRE, USFS, PG&E) develop actionable, prioritized plans to mitigate risk across communities, road and utility infrastructure, and natural capital.

Our current offerings include: multi-dimensional risk monitoring and forecasting, decision support for communities and land managers; utility products for anticipating and proactively protecting against utility-ignited wildfires with precision; and several data+report style offerings, primarily focused on wildfire hazard and risk data, and ecological outcomes. We are committed to bringing the best possible science, data, and algorithms together in interfaces that help Fire Districts, Land Managers, Resource Conservation Districts, Property Owners, Insurers, Water Utilities, and Electrical Utilities take action in the face of uncertainty and complexity.

Vibrant Planet is backed by climate and ecosystem resilience solutions leaders, including Citi Impact Fund, Microsoft, Earthshot, Elemental Excelerator, Ecosystem Integrity Fund, Chris Cox (CPO at FB), Neil Hunt (Former CPO of Netflix), Cisco, Valia Ventures, and Grantham Foundation..

About the Role

Vibrant Planet seeks a Senior Product Manager to take an early-stage line of business from 0.5 to 100. The Senior Utilities PM will report to the Chief Product Officer and partner closely with fire science and analytics, application and data engineering, design, and business development to cover user experience, data flows, fire science, partnership and delivery mechanisms.

This individual will own customer research, user and API interfaces; co-own data strategies with the lead fire scientist and lead engineer; and play an essential role in developing key partnerships with the Utilities general manager. This is an opportunity to work with a top notch team on a product with significant impact on building wildfire and infrastructure resilience.

Responsibilities

Customer Insight & Advocacy

• Be the expert on named account user experiences - within Vibrant Planet applications and within their roles more broadly - using a wide range of quantitative and qualitative tools including direct interviews supported by vibe code prototypes, passive data collection and analysis, internet research, and survey research.

• Advocate effectively for the interests of users with the business, design, and engineering, including through moderation of “dogfooding” exercises (usage and testing of workflows and data from multiple customer points of view).

Product Design & Delivery

• Synthesize user needs and technical capabilities into coherent, prioritized features and products.

• Own the product roadmap for assigned areas, prioritizing and making trade-offs transparently and communicating them clearly across the organization.

• Collaborate with Design, Science, and Engineering to deliver effectively and on time.

• Communicate team accomplishments, progress, and risks to leadership and to the company at large.

• Provide material input to company strategy and investor docs.

Business Strategy & Collaboration

• Develop and pressure-test business cases for new product bets, including pricing, packaging, and go-to-market framing.

• Create and articulate strategic differentiators (“the moat”), and understand the importance of scientifically sound models and results

• Partner with leadership on how product investments map to company growth.

• Support sales and marketing activities with training, collateral, and collaboration.

• Contribute to proposals, pilots, and strategic account conversations.

Experience and Background

• 7+ years of experience in product management, with demonstrated experience owning complex B2B or B2G products.

• Track record of leading customer discovery with technical, expert, or enterprise customers and translating findings into product decisions.

• Zero-to-one experience. Business model definition, pricing input, liability issues, creating training and support as part of the product.

• Proven ability to work alongside deep domain experts (scientists, engineers, analysts) and add value - STEM education or equivalent experience. While you won’t be asked to do a ton of data analysis yourself, we are looking for someone comfortable with data and statistics.

• Significant experience in one or more of: electric utilities space, meteorology, fire modeling.

• Preferrably: experience building products with a strong geospatial component.

Characteristics and Skills

• Emotional intelligence and situational leadership skills

• Ability to turn observation into actionable insight

• Ability to co-direct strong execution with a remote interdisciplinary team

• Excellent written and verbal communication

• Comfortable creating structure in an ambiguous environment, and comfortable with challenging structures if required

• Detail oriented

• Demonstrate optimistic realism

• Excited to work in a startup environment

• Passion for our mission

• Able to travel occasionally (4-8 trips/year)

Location

We are a remote first company with the majority of the team in the US west coast and mountain time zones. Bay Area, Tahoe region, and Missoula, MT are preferred for this position. Pacific or Mountain Timezone hours are required, US location is required.

Compensation

$150,000-210,000 salary (DOE), plus equity and benefits

Equal Opportunity Employer

Vibrant Planet is committed to diversity. We encourage applicants from all cultures, races, colors, religions, sexes, national or regional origins, ages, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, military, or other status protected by law to apply.

We are most interested in finding the best candidate for the job, and that candidate may come from a less traditional background, but have capacity to grow into and thrive in the position after some mentoring. We encourage each candidate to think broadly about their unique background and skill set and how it may relate to the role.