Product Manager
Location: Remote, New York City, or Oakland, CA
Role Type: Full-time
Compensation: $135,000
Visa sponsorship: Not available
Hires remotely in: United States
Experience: 3+ years
-
Recidiviz is thrilled to be hiring a Product Manager to join our team! We’re a small, fast-moving nonprofit that builds tools that impact criminal justice decision making and outcomes. That’s where you come in. We’re looking for a creative, high-agency product leader who can help shape our roadmap, rally cross-functional teams, and bring impactful ideas to life with scrappy execution and strategic insight.
About us
Recidiviz is creating safer, healthier communities by improving outcomes for people in the criminal justice system. We build technology to reduce the number of people in prison and to help criminal justice leaders embrace data-driven decision-making.
Using software tools and thoughtful product design, we’ve been able to safely and permanently reduce incarceration and improve outcomes. We work side-by-side with leaders of the criminal justice system, people in prison and on supervision, and ecosystem partners to build a better path forward. In addition to the revenue we earn from state partners, some of the most respected philanthropists and foundations support our work.
People who succeed at Recidiviz lead with kindness and humility, assume good intent, learn from failure, and fix problems when they see them. They are excited to work arm in arm with government leadership and staff to improve outcomes. They are great listeners. They build deep relationships with and empathy for the people we work with and the people who our mission serves, even when those two groups feel at odds.
About the role
Product Managers at Recidiviz own big, complex, mission-critical problem spaces and turn them into high-impact, highly-loved software. You’ll work with engineers, designers, and justice system leaders to identify opportunities, ship products, and iterate fast. Travel is part of the role and planned collaboratively — but the role is remote-flexible with offices in NYC and Oakland for those who prefer hybrid.
Please note: We expect this role will require 10-25% of time spent traveling domestically across the US, about 1-3 trips per quarter. We expect these trips to include visits to prisons and parole offices.
Core responsibilities
- Lead strategy and execution for one or more of our state partner portfolios — from vision to wireframe to deployment and iteration
- Translate ambiguous real-world needs into smart, user-centric product decisions in collaboration with state partners, engineers, and designers
- Drive product discovery with grit and creativity — conducting interviews, mapping workflows, and testing hypotheses in scrappy ways
- Define metrics, track outcomes, and communicate impact across internal and external audiences
- Foster a strong product culture grounded in clarity, curiosity, and urgency
- Roll up your sleeves to help with whatever it takes — we’re a small team, and we all pitch in
Wild success
In your first year at Recidiviz, you might:
- Launch a new tool that helps thousands of people safely exit the correctional system — and scale that tool to be used in multiple states within months.
- Own a portfolio of tools that enable decision makers in corrections to improve reentry outcomes of justice-impacted individuals.
- Collaboratively define a product vision and strategy that reimagines the criminal justice system into an engine for economic mobility.
Minimum qualifications
- 3+ years of experience in product management building user-facing software
- Strong product sense and strategic intuition — you can see the big picture and sweat the details
- Comfortable leading through ambiguity and independently making calls with imperfect data
- Proven ability to collaborate with complex stakeholder relationships with empathy, diplomacy, and clarity
- Love being scrappy - you spot opportunities others miss and aren’t afraid to roll up your sleeves to chase them. You treat constraints as catalysts, not roadblocks, and bring ingenuity to both strategy and execution.
- Technical fluency — you’re comfortable working closely with engineers and understanding architectural tradeoffs
- Passion for our mission to make the criminal justice system more humane, equitable, and effective
- Willing to travel: We expect this role will require 10-25% of time spent traveling domestically across the US, about 1-3 trips per quarter. These trips include visits to prisons and parole offices.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience shipping products in government, health, criminal justice, or similarly complex domains
- Background in startups, civic tech, or other resource-constrained, impact-driven environments
- Strong storytelling skills for motivating teams, aligning stakeholders, and driving change
- Corrections industry working experience, or lived experience navigating the corrections system
Compensation
Compensation is standardized based on roles and responsibilities. This ensures equitable compensation and responsible stewardship of our resources. As such, we do not negotiate compensation offers.
The compensation for this role is $135,000.
What we offer
- Effective, extremely thoughtful colleagues, working together on a mission that matters
- 90% medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage for you and your dependents
- Flexible time off, including 20 days of PTO, 3 days of paid volunteering time, and 13 paid holidays per year
- 401(k) retirement plan with 5% company match and no vesting period
- 12 weeks of paid parental leave
- Complimentary One Medical membership (availability based on location)
- Partnership with Carrot to provide employees with inclusive fertility and family-forming benefits, as well as a small but growing number of hormonal health and gender-affirming care benefits
- Monthly ClassPass credit for personal wellness
- Free mental health support via Talkspace
- Well-located offices in Oakland and Manhattan, with the flexibility to work remotely or go into either office as you choose
- An annual company offsite and other ad-hoc gatherings
- All the exhilarating challenges and stretch opportunities of a tech startup, combined with the mission-driven heart of a nonprofit
More about Recidiviz
Recidiviz was an all-volunteer effort until early 2019, when Clementine, Andrew, and Joshua founded the organization. Since then, we’ve built an A-team of software engineers, designers, product managers and domain experts, from companies like Google, Apple, Dropbox, Opower, and Sidewalk Labs. Recidiviz was part of Y-Combinator’s 2019 class and has received support from some of the most respected philanthropists and foundations, including Ford Foundation, Mackenzie Scott, Schmidt Futures, Arnold Ventures, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Mozilla Foundation.
Today, Recidiviz works with (and earns revenue from) over 18 state partners – big and small, red and blue – and covers more than 40% of the US incarcerated population. We have helped to get tens of thousands of people out of the criminal justice system, safely and equitably, and saved states nearly $1 billion. In the next five years, Recidiviz plans to partner with 40 states and help 250,000 people who are stuck in the system to get out and stay out. In addition to partnering with state Departments of Corrections, Recidiviz collaborates with and learns from partners – from organizations like the Correctional Leaders Association (CLA) to community based organizations and justice-impacted individuals, whose perspectives guide our work.
To learn more about how we do what we do, check out our 2024 Year in Review, read some press coverage, or watch our TED Talk. And if you’re really keen to see our work, you can dive into our Github :).
An important note
Lasting change is always built on diversity. Recidiviz recruits, employs, trains, compensates and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, gender identity and all protected status as required by applicable law. We consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a special need that requires accommodation, please let us know in your application. Even if you don't think you meet all the criteria above, drop your resume, and we'll take a look – you might be great for another role or another time!