Senior Product Manager, Utility Applications

Vibrant Planet is a science, forestry, policy, and tech-driven organization dedicated to reducing catastrophic fire impacts on communities and ecosystems. Their software platform monitors and forecasts wildfire and climate risk, helping customers like CAL FIRE, USFS, and PG&E develop actionable plans to mitigate risks across communities, infrastructure, and natural capital.

The company’s offerings include:

• Multi-dimensional risk monitoring and forecasting
• Decision support for communities and land managers
• Utility products for anticipating and proactively protecting against utility-ignited wildfires with precision
• Data and report-style offerings focused on wildfire hazard, risk data, and ecological outcomes

Vibrant Planet is backed by prominent investors, including Citi Impact Fund, Microsoft, Earthshot, Elemental Excelerator, and Cisco.

The Role

The organization seeks a Senior Product Manager to scale an early-stage line of business from 0.5 to 100. The Senior Utilities PM will report to the Chief Product Officer and collaborate with fire science, analytics, application and data engineering, design, and business development teams. Key responsibilities include:

• Owning customer research, user and API interfaces
• Co-owning data strategies with lead fire scientists and engineers
• Developing key partnerships with utilities general managers

This role offers the opportunity to work with a high-performing team on a product with significant impact on wildfire and infrastructure resilience.

Responsibilities

Customer Insight & Advocacy

• Serve as the expert on named account user experiences within Vibrant Planet applications and broader roles, using quantitative and qualitative tools like direct interviews, vibe code prototypes, passive data collection, internet research, and survey research.
• Advocate for user interests with business, design, and engineering teams, including moderating “dogfooding” exercises.

Product Design & Delivery

• Synthesize user needs and technical capabilities into coherent, prioritized features and products.
• Own the product roadmap, prioritizing and making transparent trade-offs while communicating clearly across the organization.
• Collaborate with Design, Science, and Engineering to deliver effectively and on time.
• Communicate team accomplishments, progress, and risks to leadership and the company.
• Provide material input to company strategy and investor documentation.

Business Strategy & Collaboration

• Develop and pressure-test business cases for new product bets, including pricing, packaging, and go-to-market strategies.
• Create and articulate strategic differentiators, emphasizing scientifically sound models and results.
• Partner with leadership on aligning product investments with company growth.
• Support sales and marketing activities with training, collateral, and collaboration.
• Contribute to proposals, pilots, and strategic account conversations.

Experience and Background

• 7+ years of experience in product management, with a demonstrated track record in owning complex B2B or B2G products.
• Experience leading customer discovery with technical, expert, or enterprise customers and translating findings into product decisions.
• Zero-to-one experience, including business model definition, pricing input, liability issues, and creating training and support as part of the product.
• Proven ability to work alongside deep domain experts (scientists, engineers, analysts) and add value, preferably with a STEM education or equivalent experience. Comfortable with data and statistics.
• Significant experience in one or more of: electric utilities space, meteorology, fire modeling.
• Preferable: experience building products with a strong geospatial component.

Characteristics and Skills

• Emotional intelligence and situational leadership skills
• Ability to turn observation into actionable insight
• Ability to co-direct strong execution with a remote interdisciplinary team
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Comfortable creating structure in ambiguous environments and challenging structures if required
• Detail-oriented
• Demonstrate optimistic realism
• Excited to work in a startup environment
• Passion for the mission of reducing catastrophic fire impacts
• Able to travel occasionally (4-8 trips/year)