Product Manager, Operations & Applied AI

Product Manager, Operations & Applied AI

Vinyl Equity is building the next generation of capital-markets infrastructure—starting with a modern, digital-native transfer agent for public companies. In this role, operations is the product, and you’ll turn regulated, multi-party workflows into software that’s instrumented, guardrailed, self-serve, and AI-assisted—so correctness is built in and the business scales without scaling manual effort.

Also a fit if you call yourself: Product Manager (Operations), Technical Product Manager, Applied AI Product Manager

The Work

• Make Vinyl’s operations AI-native: establish the baseline for where operator time goes, then apply human-in-the-loop AI to high-volume workflow ingestion, support triage, and operator copilots over the ledger layer.
• Own the requirements pipeline end-to-end: translate operator and issuer needs into build-ready specs—grounded in domain facts, edge cases, and clear recommendations—so engineers in another timezone can execute without a meeting.
• Ship self-serve experiences for issuers and shareholders: deliver the reporting, exports, and status views that let customers serve themselves directly, including secure access for issuers to query their records through their own AI tools.
• Extend the platform to the next workflows: bring tender offers, escheatment/unclaimed property, and disbursements onto product rails as prioritized bets with clear ROI.
• Instrument real-time visibility and accountability: create the transparency layer across transfers, corporate actions, proxy, and paying agency steps—so every stakeholder can see where a process stands and who owns each step.
• Design correctness and controls into the product: encode invariants, maker-checker approvals, and audit trails so compliance is a property of the software—and the right action is the easy action.

What You’ll Need

• Hands-on product/ops experience turning your own working practice into standards others can adopt.
• Practical experience deploying AI/ML in a product or operations context you built, including eval-driven development, prompt/context engineering, and API integrations.
• Strong technical foundation: you can read code, understand integrations, evaluate model capabilities, and work directly with engineers.
• A track record designing correctness and controls in regulated or high-stakes domains—thinking in invariants, edge cases, and failure modes.
• Ability to reduce manual load without “process for process’s sake”—and to measure and communicate business impact clearly.
• Comfort collaborating asynchronously with distributed teams through clear writing and decision records engineers can act on.

Even Better If

• You’ve worked in fintech, regtech, or another compliance-heavy regulated environment.
• You’re familiar with React, Next.js, Node.js, AWS, and GitHub.

Who Thrives Here

• You’re the kind of builder who gets annoyed by friction at the “apply” moment—and you apply that same instinct to product: clarity, next steps, and fewer ways for work to stall.
• You work like a scientist: hypothesize, run controlled pilots, learn fast, and pivot decisively when results don’t match expectations.
• You protect momentum by tightening ownership and process when things get fuzzy—so effort doesn’t leak and decisions don’t drift.
• You collaborate with engineers through clear specs and context that stand on their own, not through constant meetings.

The Team

You’ll work closely with Vinyl’s global engineering team and partner daily with the people closest to operations, sales, and partnerships. The role sits in Chicago at West Loop headquarters, co-located with the CEO and core functions, and you’ll ship alongside engineers rather than handing off requirements. You’ll be expected to bring structure to complex workflows while keeping the product grounded in real operator and customer needs.

Comp, Logistics and Benefits

This is a full-time role with a target base salary of $130k–$207k, plus equity-based compensation. The role is Chicago-based (West Loop) and requires in-office work at least three days per week.

Benefits include:

• Medical, dental & vision insurance
• 401k
• Flexible PTO

Non-Traditional Backgrounds

If you’ve built and shipped in any mix of product, technical operations, solutions architecture, or TPM—especially where correctness and edge cases mattered—you’ll fit right in.