Senior Manager / Associate Director - Product Operations

Instawork is on a mission to create meaningful economic opportunities for skilled hourly professionals in communities around the globe. Our AI-powered labor marketplace helps local businesses scale, and enables global technology companies to push the frontiers of robotics and AI. Backed by world-class investors like Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock, Y Combinator, and others, we’re looking for exceptional talent to reimagine the way the world works.

We are moving beyond the era of buttons and screens. We believe the future of our marketplace isn't a better UI; it’s the disappearance of the UI. We are transitioning from an app-based marketplace to an agent-first ecosystem where intelligent entities negotiate, schedule, and execute on behalf of our Pros and Partners.

As the Director of Product Operations, you are the master architect of this transition. You won't just manage a team; you will define the technical infrastructure that allows our marketplace to run autonomously. You are a "Builder-Leader" who can debate model latency with engineers in the morning and present agentic ROI to the Board in the afternoon.

Your Mandate: The Three Pillars

Architectural Leadership (The "Agent-First" Blueprint)

• Define the roadmap for transitioning from manual "point-and-click" workflows to intent-driven delegation.

• Oversee the design of the "Agentic Layer"—the middleware that translates user intent into marketplace actions.

• Ensure our "Ops" are not just efficient, but programmatic and self-healing.

2. Technical Execution & Hyper-Automation

• Lead the "Strike Team" that prototypes high-stakes automations. You are expected to be hands-on with Python/TypeScript, navigating Cursor or Replit to build the first 20% of a solution that proves a concept.

• Implement Reasoning-as-a-Service: Distinguish where LLMs (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini) are required for nuance versus where deterministic logic provides the reliability a marketplace demands.

3. Marketplace Intelligence

• Build automated systems to solve for liquidity balancing and real-time negotiation.

• Develop the telemetry needed to "debug" an agentic world. If an agent fails to close a deal, you need the data infrastructure to know why (Was it the prompt? The data? The logic?).

Who You Are

• The 10-Year Veteran: You have spent a decade at the intersection of Product, Engineering, and Operations. You’ve seen the shift from SaaS to Mobile, and you’re now leading the shift to AI.

• A Technical Polymath: You likely started in Engineering and moved into Product/Ops. You can read a PR, query a vector database, and build a LangChain/AutoGPT-style pipeline without hand-holding.

• Systems Thinker: You don't solve problems with more headcount; you solve them with better code and smarter agents.

• Bangalore Ecosystem Leader: You understand how to build and mentor high-performance technical teams in India's premier tech hub.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in Product Operations, Technical Program Management, or Engineering Leadership (at least 4 years in a leadership role).

• Deep Automation Stack: Expert-level proficiency in Python or TypeScript. Experience with AI-native development environments and building with LLM APIs is non-negotiable.

• Marketplace Experience: Proven track record in high-frequency marketplaces (e.g., Ride-sharing, Food Delivery, Freelance platforms) where real-time matching is critical.

• Agentic Portfolio: You must be able to demonstrate (via GitHub or a portfolio) actual agents or autonomous workflows you have built—not just "GPT wrappers."

Our Values

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Empathy, Trust & Candor
We put ourselves in the shoes of our colleagues and customers and don’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations, instead building trust through honest and direct feedback.

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Bias for Action
We practice high-velocity decision-making, clear-eyed that we often operate with incomplete information. Growing quickly means it’s OK to be wrong, so long as we learn from our mistakes and course correct!

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Always Be Learning
We’re a curious bunch, and with AI transforming our workplace we encourage everyone to learn from each other, compounding our knowledge and experience to help us change an entire industry.

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Act Like an Owner
We work long, hard, and smart, building products that delight our users and drive growth. Your ability to impact Instawork is limited only by your courage and conviction, not your job description.

About Instawork

Founded in 2015, Instawork is the nation’s leading online labor marketplace for food services, hospitality, light industry, and logistics, connecting more than 7M skilled workers with local restaurants, hotels, warehouses, stadiums, and more. Our AI-powered platform serves thousands of businesses across more than 50 major markets in the United States and Canada. We're not just helping fill shifts, we're supporting local economies—and we're just getting started!

Instawork has been featured by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Forbes included us on their Next Billion Dollar Startups list; RetailTech Breakthrough named us Workforce Hiring Solution of the Year for 2025; and Inc. 5000 recognized us as one of the country's top 10% fastest-growing companies two years in a row. But what matters most is our impact. We're solving real problems for real people, and we’re doing it at scale.

Join our team to help us build something that matters! We’re looking for superstars who want to help us shape the future of work. With hubs in San Francisco, Bangalore, and Chicago, city offices in New York, Phoenix, and Singapore, we're back to working together in-person five days a week because we believe the best ideas happen when great people collaborate face-to-face. We also value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.

Ready to make an impact? Learn more at www.instawork.com/about.

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