Product Manager

Product Manager

Location: Chicago, IL (or remote for extremely well-qualified candidates)

Office: 3 days/week in South Loop office

Reports to: Head of Operations

Compensation: $143,000–$163,000 + equity

About Tavern Research

Tavern Research is a political tech startup that builds tools and insights to help our customers win elections and make better decisions. We specialize in scaling expert human work—like content generation and survey research—through technology. We’re venture-backed, mission-driven, fast-moving, and mostly technical. Everything else lives on our website. If you still have questions, tell us when you apply.

$143,000 - $163,000 a year

About You

You’re someone who likes turning ambiguity into clarity. You don’t just manage tickets—you think about why the work matters, how users actually experience it, and what tradeoffs are worth making. You balance speed with rigor, and you’re comfortable making decisions with imperfect information.

You’re fluent in both technical detail and customer-facing language. You can talk with engineers about constraints in the morning and explain value to non-technical stakeholders in the afternoon. You collect inputs, synthesize signal from noise, and articulate a clear direction that helps teams move forward with confidence.

You’re curious by nature about users, systems, political contexts, and emerging tools. You welcome healthy debate, build trust across teams, and aren’t afraid to escalate when decisions are stuck. You want to work somewhere fast-moving, mission-oriented, and opinionated about building things that actually get used.

About the Role

As Product Manager, you are the connective tissue between customer needs, business strategy, and product execution. You support Tavern’s growing set of product verticals and ensure our roadmap aligns with both near-term revenue and long-term vision.

This is an execution-focused role. You will translate strategy into shippable features, stand up and drive sprint cycles, and make fast, data-informed decisions. You’ll gather real-time feedback from customers, the Delivery team, Sales, and internal stakeholders and convert it into clear priorities and product requirements.

Along the way, you’ll help shape the internal and external product narrative: what we build, who it’s for, why it matters, and how it strengthens AI-driven political communication. This role offers room to grow into deeper strategic ownership as Tavern’s product suite expands.

Responsibilities

-Collaborate across customers, engineering, delivery, research, and leadership to align product needs and priorities

-Translate company goals into clear product milestones and manage Tavern’s product roadmap

-Plan and coordinate sprints, define scope, and support weekly release cycles with engineering

-Gather real-time feedback from delivery teams, researchers, and clients to identify product opportunities

-Drive rapid test-measure-learn iteration loops to streamline workflows and improve user experience

-Build and maintain documentation in Notion, GitHub, and internal tools, including workflows, specs, and architecture diagrams

-Clearly communicate product direction, rationale, and technical constraints across teams

-Monitor product performance and use data to inform prioritization and decision-making

Qualifications

-4–6 years of product management experience, ideally in early-stage or fast-paced tech environments

-Demonstrated ability to ship products and features from concept to launch

-Strong analytical skills and comfort using data to support decisions

-Technical fluency and ease working closely with engineering; familiarity with SQL or data workflows is a plus

-Ability to break down complex problems into structured, actionable requirements

-Clear, effective communicator for both technical and non-technical audiences

-Highly collaborative with strong judgment around prioritization, tradeoffs, and escalation

-Curiosity about political technology, media standards, and research methodology

-Experience supporting or managing multi-product roadmaps is a plus

To be explicit: you don’t need a specific level of education to work here. You just need to be exceptional at the things we’re asking you to do.

Benefits

Premium health insurance

Unlimited PTO

Office closed for all federal holidays

401(k) match

Equity

Tavern Research is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.