Product Manager 

About CIP

The Collective Intelligence Project builds infrastructure that gives people across the globe meaningful input into how AI systems are developed and governed. We combine large-scale deliberation, participatory evaluation, and institutional partnerships in a way no lab, regulator, or civil society organization can achieve alone.

We're a small, high-leverage team backed by leading foundations (Google.org, Future of Life Foundation, Omidyar Network, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) working with top AI labs and governments to ensure AI development expands democratic capacity rather than undermining it.

About the Role

We are hiring a product manager to keep CIP’s interconnected projects moving and shipping on time and ensuring that they serve the researchers, labs, and policymakers using our tools. The primary challenge is coordinating across multiple functions and projects on a small team with a shifting landscape that requires adaptive prioritization.

You will be the person making sure our work connects to our mission, that engineering work and design work are aligned with research goals, that external partners are receiving what they need, and that the team is staying focused on what matters most. With our lean team, that means you’ll regularly be writing the Asana tickets, drafting partner updates, doing user research, and QAing features yourself.

This is a role with significant ownership over how CIP operates and delivers. You'll work directly with partners at AI labs and governments, shape how we scope and prioritize work, and help build the lightweight operational infrastructure a team like ours needs to punch above its weight.

You'll report to Evan Hadfield, CIP's Head of Projects.

What You’ll Do

Starting out, a typical week will look like:

Drive product strategy and delivery for Weval and CIP’s platform work (~50%)

You’ll start by owning product and project management across Weval (weval.org), our open evaluation platform. You will also coordinate work across Global Dialogues (globaldialogues.ai), and Digital Twin Evaluations, as well as internal tooling connecting these distinct but related efforts.

You’ll:

  • Own the Weval product roadmap, balancing input from AI lab partners, government users, civil society researchers, funders, and CIP colleagues into clear, sequenced priorities. Work with engineering to translate those priorities into feasible scopes and delivery plans.

  • Coordinate user research and design to ensure what we build actually works.

  • Manage delivery timelines with partners (AI labs, civil society orgs, researchers).

Keep CIP on track (~30%)

You will be the operational backbone keeping a small nonprofit team accountable without slowing it down:

  • Own project tracking in Asana

  • Hold the team to deadlines and deliverables through regular check-ins, clear documentation, and up-to-date roadmaps without introducing heavy process

  • Identify where things are stuck or at risk and intervene early

Manage stakeholders and communicate CIP’s work (~20%)

CIP works across very different audiences, and communicating our technical work is critical:

  • Collaborate with AI labs on technical integrations and platform partnerships, and represent CIP as an active technology builder and contributor.

  • Help prepare updates for funders, board, and supporters, translating core research and engineering progress into clear, compelling narratives that highlight technical impact.

  • Act as a key technical representative, bridging CIP’s engineering efforts with non-technical stakeholders who use and fund our tools, and proactively pitch new ideas and technical directions.

What Will Make You a Good Fit

Required:

  • You’ve worked on a small team where you wore multiple hats. You can’t be someone who only knows how to PM within a management structure that already exists.

  • You’re comfortable with ambiguity and research-driven timelines. Our work doesn’t follow predictable product cycles, and we work in a space where the product category itself is still being defined.

  • You have genuine facility with AI tools (like Claude, Cursor, or similar) and use them in your daily workflow to stay on the cutting edge and act as a force multiplier for building and problem-solving. You use AI tools not just for productivity but to directly build and ship. You can prototype a feature idea, write a SQL query, or spin up a simple internal tool using Claude/Cursor without waiting for engineering. At a team our size, the line between PM and builder is thin, and you're comfortable on both sides.

  • You have good instincts about where AI systems amplify human work vs. where they cut corners. You'll regularly make calls about when to use AI to move fast and when a problem requires slower, more deliberate human judgment – in our product decisions, in our own workflows, and in the infrastructure we build for others.

  • You have shipped products before and can point to specific outcomes you drove. You have 5+ years experience as a PM or similar. This is not a good environment for “learning the ropes”.

  • You have product sense and technical knowledge. You should have a sense for scope and feasibility in a web (Next.js) stack.

  • You’re proficient in Asana (or similar) for project management tracking.

Nice-to-haves:

  • Experience in civic tech, gov tech, or research

  • Experience working with or at AI companies

  • UX or user research background

  • Experience at a nonprofit or mission-driven org

This role in 12 months:

In a year, we expect this role to evolve. As AI tools continue to lower the cost of execution, the PM's value shifts further toward strategy, stakeholder judgment, and knowing what's worth building. We're looking for someone who's excited about that trajectory: a colleague who wants to spend less time managing tickets and more time shaping how democratic AI infrastructure works at scale.

What We Offer

  • Impact: Your work directly shapes how AI labs and governments use democratic input to evaluate and govern AI systems. The roadmaps you create, features you prioritize, and partnerships you coordinate will influence model releases, government procurement decisions, and safety policies worldwide.

  • Ownership: You'll own product strategy and execution across CIP's platforms. This isn't a role where you implement someone else's vision—you'll define priorities, shape what we build, and determine how we deliver value to partners. You'll have significant autonomy in deciding how CIP operates and ships.

  • Interesting problems: You're coordinating work at the intersection of frontier AI, democratic governance, and global-scale deliberation. You'll navigate challenges like: How do we translate qualitative research findings into shippable product features? How do we balance the needs of AI labs, governments, and civil society? How do we build for users across radically different contexts—from policymakers in Taiwan to farmers in rural India?

  • Great team: Our team is committed, mission-driven, and kind. You'll work directly with thoughtful researchers, experienced policy practitioners, and talented engineers. You'll also coordinate with partners across leading AI labs (Anthropic, OpenAI, Cohere), governments (UK AISI, Taiwan, India), and civil society organizations worldwide.

  • Growth: Room to expand responsibilities as our projects and team grow. Possible paths include: deeper product leadership as we scale, operations/COO-type roles, partnerships and business development, or expanding into new domains depending on your interests and CIP's evolution.

  • Compensation: $150k + comprehensive benefits including health/dental/vision, 403(b) [nonprofit version of 401(k)], generous PTO

  • Flexibility: We trust people to manage their own time. That means flexible hours, real accommodation for life stuff (appointments, errands, sick days, time off), and a culture that judges output over presence. That said, we work hybrid in-office/remote on Pacific time and our office is in Japantown, SF, and we have a strong preference for someone who can be in-person regularly for the kind of collaborative, whiteboard-it-out work that's hard to replicate on Zoom.

To Apply:

Email us at hiring@cip.org with:

  • Your resume and a relevant portfolio/work samples

  • A brief note about why you're interested in this work

  • A project you managed that you're proud of and why

We're looking to hire ASAP and will review applications on a rolling basis.