# The Stacks Product Manager

**Company:** [Astera](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/astera)
**Location:** Emeryville, CA
**Role:** Product Management
**Salary:** $200k – $300k/yr
**Experience:** 4+ years
**Skills:** Product Roadmapping, User Research, Product Specifications, User Stories, Agile Development, Performance Metrics, Accessibility Standards, Information Architecture, System Architecture, Web Products
**Posted:** 2025-12-09

> Leads vision, strategy, and execution for The Stacks, an open-access platform for scientific knowledge. Translates user needs into roadmaps, collaborates with engineering/design, conducts research, and ensures high usability. Requires 4-7+ years PM experience in content/research tools and technical fluency.

## Job Description

## Key Responsibilities
- Drive the product vision and strategy for The Stacks in alignment with Astera’s mission.
- Develop and maintain a clear product roadmap with thoughtful prioritization of features and milestones.
- Translate conceptual ideas and user needs into clear product requirements, specifications, and user stories.
- Work closely with engineering and design to ensure features are delivered with high quality, usability, and technical feasibility.
- Lead iterative development cycles by clarifying requirements, making tradeoff decisions, and keeping teams aligned.
- Conduct user research and gather structured feedback from researchers, writers, and early adopters to inform product direction.
- Analyze workflows, pain points, and habits of scientific and technical users to shape product design decisions.
- Ensure The Stacks maintains high standards for performance, accessibility, reliability, and user experience.
- Coordinate with internal teams and external partners to ensure cohesive development and smooth collaboration.
- Communicate product decisions, timelines, tradeoffs, and progress clearly to leadership and stakeholders.
- Drive usage by understanding performance metrics and qualitative feedback to prioritize opportunities for improvement.
- Advocate for open science principles and incorporate them into product decisions and long-term planning.

## Qualifications
- 4–7+ years of product management experience, ideally in content platforms, digital publishing, research tools, or adjacent fields.
- Demonstrated ability to lead product development from 0 → 1.
- Familiarity with open science concepts and contemporary research workflows.
- Experience working closely with engineering and design; able to translate technical constraints into product decisions.
- Technical fluency (comfortable reading specs, understanding system architecture, and discussing tradeoffs), ideally with prior experience in: software development, or technical product management roles, or overseeing complex web products.
- Exceptional communication skills (clear, structured, succinct).
- High product intuition with a strong sense for usability, information architecture, and content experience.
- Ability to operate in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and bring structure to open-ended problems.

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