Founding Product Manager

🏛️ About GovWell

We the people (and the taxpayers) deserve good government — but today, interacting with government services is often frustrating and inefficient. GovWell is building the AI-powered platform that transforms how governments serve communities, starting with local agencies.

Our first product helps municipal and county governments modernize complex services like permitting and licensing. GovWell combines a highly configurable SaaS system of record with generative AI that automates work for staff, guides residents through services, and is radically simple to deploy.

Founded in 2023, GovWell powers 3,000+ critical processes for agencies in 29 states serving millions of residents. We’ve raised $9.5M in seed funding from Work-Bench and Bienville Capital, and work in person at our HQ in New York City. Read more about our founding story in TechCrunch.

☀️ Why GovWell?

• A mission that matters: Building AI-powered products to fix outdated government systems isn’t just a technical challenge—it’s a historic opportunity to improve our foundational relationship with government and ensure trillions of tax dollars result in high quality services. WATCH: Mission & Vision with CEO & Co-Founder Troy LeCaire

• Real-world impact: GovWell’s product is the system of record for government services that affect millions of Americans. From streamlining permitting for small businesses to accelerating affordable housing development, your work will make an immediate difference.

• Join a startup in hyper-growth: We’ve found product-market fit and are scaling the business very quickly (4X ARR growth in the last year). As an early team member, you’ll learn what it takes to build a successful startup. You’ll work closely with the founders while enjoying exceptional autonomy and ownership over your work.

🌟 Role overview

GovWell is hiring a Founding Product Manager to maximize the impact of our engineering organization as we scale. This role owns cross-team product sequencing, prioritization, and problem framing to ensure we’re building the most valuable things for customers, in the right order, with clear tradeoffs and user outcomes.

You’ll work closely with engineering leads and design to identify the highest-leverage opportunities across the platform, develop deep understanding of government workflows and constraints, and translate that into clear plans that enable engineers to own execution end-to-end.

This role reports directly to GovWell’s founders. We operate in a hybrid model with regular in-person collaboration in our New York City office (3+ days per week).

💻 What you’ll do

• Own product sequencing and prioritization across teams, including quarterly and annual roadmaps with clear tradeoffs, dependencies, and rationale.

• Independently ramp on the GovWell product by exploring workflows firsthand and using tools like Cursor and the codebase to understand system behavior and constraints.

• Run customer discovery end-to-end, including calls, onsite visits, and workflow shadowing with government teams.

• Write clear PRDs, specs, and problem statements that enable engineers to execute autonomously.

• Partner deeply with engineering leads and design to frame problems correctly and ensure solutions fit into a coherent, scalable platform.

• Prototype and iterate quickly using tools like Lovable, Figma, Cursor and AI prototyping to validate workflows before engineering investment.

• Conduct competitive, domain, and regulatory research to inform product decisions.

• Maintain platform coherence over time, preventing fragmentation across teams and product surfaces.

🧠 Who you are

• 5+ years of experience in product-engineering roles, with end-to-end ownership of meaningful SaaS or platform products at a high-growth company.

• Strong technical operator with IC coding experience; comfortable investigating workflows directly in the product and codebase, understanding system constraints, and working deeply with engineers.

• Founder-mode product owner who operates with high autonomy, makes sound tradeoffs, and drives execution without heavy process or oversight.

• Clear, concise written communicator who produces PRDs and decision docs that unblock engineers and align teams.

• Strong sequencing and systems thinking; able to manage dependencies and evolve a coherent platform across multiple teams.

• Deep curiosity about government workflows and constraints; prior govtech or public-sector exposure is a plus but not required.

• Advanced AI user who actively leverages AI in daily work, product thinking, and everyday life.

🖥️ Our tech stack

• React

• TypeScript

• Node.js

• GraphQL

• PostgreSQL

• RedwoodJS

• AWS

• OpenAI API

👥 Meet the team

• Ben Cohen, Co-Founder and CTO.

  • Ex Uber, Amazon, UIPath.

  • BA summa cum laude CS, Princeton

• Richard Le, Full-stack Eng

  • Ex Microsoft

  • BA summa cum laude CS, UNC Chapel Hill

• Zach Stecker, Mobile Eng

  • Prev Senior Eng at TodayTix

  • CS, Princeton

• Michael Sosnick, Fullstack Eng

  • Ex Meta SWE, Product at UMG

  • CS & Econ, UPenn

• Ethan Fuld, Fullstack Eng

  • Ex Amazon, PwC

  • Info Science, Cornell

• Portia Wilson, Data Scientist

  • Prev CompStak, Vitech Systems

  • BA Math & Econ, Lafayette & MS Data Science, Stevens

💸 Compensation and benefits

Compensation within the posted salary band will be commensurate with experience. All offers will include:

• Competitive base salary.

• Equity / stock options.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.

• 401(k) program.

• Flexible PTO.

#LI-AC1