Product Manager, Core Product Experiences

Job description

About Arlo: At Arlo, we're passionate about creating innovative and reliable solutions that help people protect what matters most to them. Our team is dedicated to delivering products that exceed our customers' expectations, while always pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the world of protection technology. We believe that everyone deserves to feel safe and secure, whether they're at home or away, and we're committed to providing our customers with the peace of mind they need to live their lives without worry. Arlo’s deep expertise in AI- and CV-powered analytics, cloud services, user experience, product design, and innovative wireless and RF connectivity enables the delivery of a seamless, smart security experience for Arlo users that is easy to set up and interact with every day. We're looking for someone who is deeply accountable for the customer experience — who understands users at a granular level, holds a high bar for quality, and partners fluently with engineering to ship it. You use modern tools, including AI, to work efficiently — but what sets you apart is your judgment about what makes a great customer experience. This is a fixed term contract role of up to 12 months. ABOUT THE ROLE As our Experience Lead for the Arlo app ecosystem, you are accountable for the end-to-end product experience — not just for shipping features, but for how the product feels to use, from first impression through long-term retention. You bring deep empathy for the customer and the judgment to know when something is good enough to ship and when it isn't. You partner closely with engineering — you can sit in an architecture review and add value, and you write specs that hold up under real build pressure. You're comfortable using AI tools where they genuinely speed things up, but you're accountable for the outcome either way, not just the workflow. WHAT YOU'RE ACCOUNTABLE FOR ★ Customer Experience → Accountable for the holistic product experience across all surfaces — from first impression to long-term retention → Establish and enforce experience standards, design principles, and quality bars that scale → Synthesize customer research, behavioral data, and support signals into a clear, prioritized experience vision → Lead cross-functional experience reviews that align product, design, and engineering on customer outcomes → Define what "done" looks like from a user's perspective — not a developer's ✎ Specs & Documentation → Write PRDs, specs, and user stories that are clear enough to require minimal back-and-forth with engineering → Use AI tools and other modern workflows where they genuinely speed things up — while staying accountable for the quality of the output → Keep specs current as engineering feedback and edge cases surface during the build → Turn customer research, support themes, and competitive context into actionable requirements ⚙ Engineering Partnership → Demonstrate fluency across the full SDLC: sprint planning, backlog grooming, story pointing, CI/CD, code review, staging, release management → Accountable for the PM side of the operating model — from ticket creation through QA sign-off and post-launch monitoring → Write specs at the right level of fidelity — enough context for engineering to move fast, enough flexibility to stay adaptive → Participate meaningfully in architecture discussions and technical trade-off conversations without needing hand-holding → Hold both product and engineering accountable to the definition-of-ready and definition-of-done ↔ Cross-Functional Leadership → Serve as the connective tissue between product, engineering, design, data, and customer care → Run tight, well-prepared ceremonies — standups, retros, and planning grounded in real data and customer signal → Translate fluently between customer language and technical language, often in the same conversation → Elevate the team by sharing the workflows, templates, and practices that make you effective WHAT YOU BRING Required ✓ 3+ years in product management with a track record of shipping consumer-facing products end to end ✓ Demonstrated accountability for a product experience holistically — from first impression through retention ✓ Strong understanding of the engineering development lifecycle: sprint cadences, CI/CD pipelines, branching strategies, staging environments, and release processes ✓ Proven track record writing high-quality specs and PRDs that require minimal clarification from engineering ✓ Experience synthesizing customer research, support signals, and behavioral data into prioritized decisions ✓ Experience proposing and implementing process changes that measurably improved delivery speed or quality ✓ Excellent written and verbal communication Preferred ◆ Engineering background or strong hands-on technical fluency (can read code, write scripts, understand system design trade-offs) ◆ Comfortable using AI tools (e.g. Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot) as everyday productivity aids — helpful, not required ◆ Background in consumer hardware, IoT, or security/smart home products ◆ Experience with developer tooling, platform products, or API/SDK products where the "user" is often an engineer ◆ Experience using customer support/care data to inform product prioritization WHO YOU ARE The Signal Reader You read support tickets, app reviews, and behavioral data the way a doctor reads vitals — you spot the pattern before anyone names it, and you turn it into a fix. The Engineering Ally Engineers trust you because you understand their constraints. You don't just throw requirements over the fence — you understand what a flawed spec costs, and you've done the work to fix it. The Experience Defender You've been in a roadmap meeting and said "no" to a technically feasible feature because it was the wrong experience choice — and you had the data and conviction to hold the line. The Force Multiplier You don't just make yourself faster — you build the workflows and playbooks that make everyone around you faster too.