Product Operations Manager

Job Description

Have you ever tried to hire a plumber? How about a house cleaner? If you have, chances are it took you way longer than it should. In the era of instant-everything, it’s crazy that you still have to waste an entire afternoon researching, calling and vetting local service professionals whenever you need one. The market for hiring them is huge — $1 trillion in the US alone — but the process is inefficient and largely offline.

Thumbtack is transforming this experience end-to-end, building a marketplace that matches millions of people with local pros for almost any project. In making these connections, not only do our customers get more done every day, our pros are able to grow their businesses and make a living doing what they’re great at.

About the Product Operations Team

Thumbtack’s Product Operations Team is on a mission to support and enable customer-centric product development. We focus on communicating updates to the company and delivering feedback to product. We represent the voice of the customer and work closely with many cross-functional partners across the business to improve our product and policies.

About the Role

Product Operations Managers at Thumbtack help product teams ensure the products and features they deliver are customer-focused and ensure operations teams have a voice in the product development cycle. They work cross-functionally to ensure smooth launches and amplify the voice of the user by reporting on pain points, challenges, and opportunities. A blend of analyst and consultant, POMs leverage a wealth of qualitative data and apply a quantitative lens to inform and influence product decisions and strategy.

Responsibilities

• Advocate for operations. Partner closely with Sales, Success, and Customer Support teams to make sure their voices are heard in the product development cycle.
• Evaluate impact . Pore through product feedback to evaluate whether products and features are having the impact they were designed to have, solve the problems they were designed to solve, and whether messaging is resonating with users as intended.
• Influence the roadmap . Distill qualitative data into concise and impactful stories that represent the needs, desires, and pains of the user.
• Amplify the user’s voice. Continuously monitor for opportunities to bring new user voice channels online, leading the effort from initial idea through implementation, including integrating the new data source into the broader feedback pipeline.
• Understand opportunities deeply. When the data available isn’t enough to get the full picture, work cross-functionally with Customer Support, Success, Managed Accounts and Sales to build out the rest of the story and become an expert in user problems.
• Drive alignment and visibility. Act as the knowledge hub for your product area, perpetually informed and ready to answer questions on in-flight work, launches, and known issues for both product and operations teams. Facilitate communication between the other disciplines on your cross-functional team.
• Collaborate on product development. Actively participate in the design and development of product features, leveraging your deep expertise in your users’ needs and attitudes to guide ideas toward optimal solutions.
• Coordinate launches. Support your Product Operations counterparts in aggregating the critical details for a given launch and ensure all necessary inputs are present to keep the launch machine running smoothly.
• Improve the practice. Thinking like a product manager, continuously examine current and past results to identify opportunities to improve the launch and feedback processes for everyone involved, including product teams, operations, and users. Routinely suspend what is and think in terms of what could or ought to be .
• Build trust. Become a thought leader and credible resource across the organization through the high standards you hold for your work. Move beyond simply sharing anecdotes by quantifying your qualitative research, developing highly accurate analyses, and becoming a trusted advisor to your team.

Required Qualifications

• BA/BS in a technical field or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years’ experience working in product management, product marketing, product operations, or program management; you understand the fundamentals of delivering products that create value for users
• Strong analytical skills with proficiency in accessing and manipulating data (SQL, Excel, Stata, R, Python, etc); you know how to get your hands on data and use it to answer questions
• Strong working knowledge of statistical concepts; you know what it means for something to be significant
• Strong influencing skills; you can build relationships with internal stakeholders and tell the user story in a compelling way
• Curiosity; you help uncover the “ why,” especially on points of potentially high impact
• User empathy; you understand that the most beautiful products in the world fail if they don’t solve real problems for their users

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s or advanced degree
• 7+ years’ experience

If you don't think you meet all of the criteria above, but still are interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box, and we're looking for someone excited to join the team.

More About Us

Thumbtack is the destination for getting things done—from house remodeling to event planning to music lessons and more. Each year, more than 200,000 professionals across the country service a growing 5 million Thumbtack projects in 1,100+ unique categories. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Francisco, Thumbtack has raised more than $275 million from Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, Javelin Investment Partners, Baillie Gifford, and Google Capital.

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Thumbtack embraces diversity. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and do not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, citizenship, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.