Director of Technical Product Management, Platform Engineering

Looking to join a world-class blockchain development team? Ava Labs makes it simple to deploy high-performance solutions for Web3, led by innovations on Avalanche. The company was founded by Cornell computer scientists, who partnered with Wall Street veterans and early Web3 leaders to execute a promising vision for redefining the way people build permissionless networks. Ava Labs is redefining the way people create value with Web3. Join us as we empower people to easily and freely digitize all the world’s assets on one open, programmable blockchain platform.

As Director of Technical Product Management on the Platform Engineering team at Ava Labs, you will link Engineering and Business Development. Your role is essential to ensure Avalanche blockchain's technology meets the needs of our key external clients and developers.

This central, pivotal role bridges the gap between opportunity sourcing by Business Development and infrastructure creation by Engineering. The primary focus is to develop a long-term, comprehensive product vision and strategic roadmap that spans multiple complex, intersecting product areas. This vision must address current market demands while proactively anticipating future trends and disruptive forces, and will directly inform executive-level prioritization and investment decisions. You will be accountable for defining measurable outcomes tied to platform adoption, ecosystem growth, and strategic partner enablement, ensuring roadmap decisions translate into durable business impact.

A critical responsibility is institutionalizing innovation across Engineering and Product groups. This involves establishing frameworks, processes, and fostering a culture of continuous experimentation. Success hinges on deep collaboration with Engineering, Business Development, Clients, and Builders to ensure the integrated product portfolio delivers exponential value and maintains market leadership.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Stakeholder Engagement: Lead collaboration with the Business Development team in conducting in-depth technical discussions with external clients, builders, and institutional partners. Serve as the senior product authority in technical consultation processes, translating complex architectural concepts into language that directly aligns with the client’s strategic business objectives and long-term ROI.

• Requirement Elucidation and Specification: Serve as the "Voice of the Builder" within the Engineering organization. Accurately capture nuanced feedback from external parties and convert ambiguous business requirements into precise technical specifications and defined user stories that inform platform-level decisions.

• Roadmap Prioritization and Influence: Co-own and drive the strategic platform roadmap in partnership with Engineering leadership, systematically integrating external market demands into the core development lifecycle. This role will directly influence strategic decision-making regarding future product development, focusing on which technical solutions address the most critical real-world problems and unlock ecosystem growth. Establish durable product operating mechanisms across Platform Engineering, including prioritization frameworks, roadmap governance, experimentation models, and post-launch measurement. Institutionalize repeatable processes that improve decision quality, execution velocity, and strategic clarity.

• Platform Capability Analysis: Continuously evaluate the current platform's feature set against competing offerings and evolving client requirements. Identify critical missing features or foundational primitives that are currently impeding the adoption by major applications, and define scalable, standardized solutions that reduce bespoke development.

• Technical Translation & Business Case Development: Actively participate in architecture review sessions, engaging senior engineers with informed questions regarding technical trade-offs. Transform complex technical proposals into clear business cases, including a quantified analysis of the projected impact. Utilize data analysis to effectively mediate and resolve disagreements between Engineering and Business Development teams, ensuring alignment around long-term platform strategy.

What We Are Looking For

• The "Bridge" Skill Set: Capacity to engage in sophisticated architectural discussions with Engineers while simultaneously articulating the return on investment (ROI) for a technical strategic shift to C-suite executives or Business Development leadership.

• Engineering DNA: A robust technical foundation, typically demonstrated by an academic degree in Computer Science or substantial prior professional experience in an Engineering role before transitioning into Product Management.

• Market Intuition: Proactively identify systemic requirements that extend beyond immediate client requests. This involves recognizing patterns, such as recurrent demands for the same specialized primitive, and initiating the development of standardized, unified platform solutions.

• Blockchain Fluency: Thorough comprehension of the web3 landscape, specifically concerning primitives such as consensus mechanisms, execution environments (especially the EVM), ZK cryptography, etc. Prior familiarity with the Avalanche ecosystem is highly advantageous.

• Ruthless Prioritization: Within a high-growth startup environment where numerous initiatives appear critical, the ability to effectively leverage data and client intelligence to discern between "must-have" features essential for platform dominance and "nice-to-have" technical innovations.

• Leadership Unlock: Demonstrated ability to operate with Director-level autonomy, influencing senior stakeholders and shaping cross-functional strategy, with the capacity to build and lead Technical Product Management capabilities as the organization scales.

WHY AVA LABS?

If you've ever thought about joining an early stage Web3 company - this is it! We're a global, world-class team of experts in computer science, economics, finance, marketing, and law with offices in New York City and Miami. We're highly passionate about Web3 and redefining the way people build and use finance and decentralized applications of all kinds. The company received early-stage funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, and Polychain Capital, with angel investments from Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant. Join us and be a pioneer in a new technology that will have implications across a range of verticals such as finance, gaming, investing, collectibles, among many others.

Ava Labs is committed to diversity in the workplace and we’re proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not hire on basis of race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, parental status, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, or any other basis protected by local, state or federal law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.