Head of Product
A new startup within Change.org is building a civic technology platform with the mission of building less polarized and more effective democracies resilient to the growing impact of AI. We are searching for a Founding Head of Product who will translate an ambitious vision for better democracies into a product that can drive mass public adoption and effective policy outcomes at global scale.
The platform leverages AI (LLMs, bridging algorithms, and world modeling) and millions of human voices to identify the >80% of issues most people agree on locally and nationally, and will mobilize millions of voters to incentivize elected officials to support those common-ground policies. We're already partnering with Republican and Democratic mayors across the US to pilot this new platform locally, and we’ll announce a “National Citizen’s Congress” later this year - a live video-based civic dialogue with representative groups of Americans from every Congressional district on the most important national issue each week to identify cross-partisan solutions. We’ll then expand to the other major democracies globally in which Change.org already has hundreds of millions of users.
We’re looking for a world-class product leader who can translate a complex, multi-stakeholder civic problem into a product people actually want to use. You have experience building 0 to 1 consumer internet products as well as deploying at scale to millions of users. You understand and embrace AI as a means to create better experiences and to unlock functionality and scale that was previously impossible. You build in an AI-first way yourself, using AI to move faster, think more clearly, and multiply your own impact. Most critically, you want to be part of a pragmatic and ambitious team made up of some of the best builders in the world operating with urgency to solve one of the most important problems of our time: building healthier democracies.
Key outcomes
Define the product vision and strategy — translate a complex, multi-stakeholder problem into a roadmap that sequences bets intelligently and makes clear what we are not building.
Ship the MVP and iterate into product-market fit — own the end-to-end experience: how someone first encounters the platform, how they participate in a deliberation, how their input gets synthesized, and how the resulting policy positions reach decision-makers.
Build an AI-native product organization — establish the workflows, tooling standards, and team norms that make AI the default mode of building. Model what AI-first product development looks like in practice: from how the team discovers user needs to how it ships, measures, and iterates.
Build the measurement architecture — define what success looks like at every stage. Establish the metrics, feedback loops, and learning systems that tell us whether the product is working, what's driving engagement, and where to invest next. Move fluently between qualitative insight and quantitative rigor.
Set the bar for product development — attract and develop builders who want to work on one of the hardest and most important product problems in the world. Establish the culture of craft, speed, intellectual honesty, and user obsession that defines how this team operates.
The most important core competencies for the role are:
Innovation Mindset: You are world-class at 0 to 1 product development. You see the whole system before it exists. You have a track record of defining product direction in high-ambiguity environments. You are comfortable with rapid prototyping and iterative learning, testing ideas before full execution, and prioritizing learning over perfection.
Exceptional Product Craft: You know the difference between a product that works and a product people love, and you won't ship the former when the latter is achievable. You care about details like the copy, the transitions, and the moments of delight or friction because you know they compound into the overall experience. You pair that taste with a strong ROI compass: you can identify the 20% that drives 80% of the value, sequence it in the right order, and make smart tradeoffs with incomplete information.
Builder Mindset: You've built and scaled early-stage products. You default to action, embrace responsibility, and don't need a large organization to be effective. You leverage AI in your own work to move faster and think more clearly. You understand what current models can and cannot do and you have strong intuition for where the frontier is heading.
Systems Thinking Across Domains: This product sits at the intersection of technology, civic participation, AI, and political incentives. You naturally reason across these domains and understand second-order effects — how a design choice shapes user behavior, how user behavior shapes data quality, how data quality shapes policy credibility. You build for the whole system, not just the interface.
Leadership & People Management: You have built and scaled multi-disciplinary product orgs with varying degrees of initial infrastructure, high ambiguity, and direct accountability to C-level leadership. You are comfortable being in the weeds when the moment requires it and comfortable stepping back when it doesn't. You hold your team to a new standard of how product work gets done: one where AI is embedded into how they discover, decide, ship, and measure.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: You are skilled at creating clarity, trust, and shared ownership across product, design, and engineering. You build a culture of collaboration by proactively initiating larger, cross-team conversations about key aspects of your work. You bring others along as you create your vision or execute your strategy, inspiring them to contribute and offer input, leading to systemic buy-in.
Target experience
10+ years of product management experience at product-led organizations, with significant time in consumer-facing products
Demonstrated experience taking a product from 0 to 1 — defining the vision, shipping the MVP, and iterating into product-market fit
Strong evidence of product craft and design taste. You can point to products you've shaped and explain the decisions behind them
Track record of building and leading high-performing product teams
Experience using AI tools to improve speed and quality of work; experience designing consumer AI product experiences is a plus!
Experience operating in politically sensitive or multi-stakeholder environments where the product must earn trust across audiences with competing incentives is a plus
Compensation
The annual salary is $330,000 USD + 20% target bonus. Our compensation philosophy is based on pay equity. All of our salaries are determined before we launch a role – they are based on a predetermined salary scale and the level on that scale.
If you want to help shape the future of democracy, we’d love to meet you!
We recognize that people assess their qualifications differently, and you may not meet every requirement listed. If you believe you could be successful in this role, we encourage you to apply.
Change.org is an open platform designed to serve people across the full range of viewpoints. Effectively supporting that mission requires teams with a wide variety of experiences, skills, and perspectives, which we consider essential to our work.
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