Product Engineer

Product Engineer II

OpenGov is seeking a Product Engineer II to take on increasing ownership of a product area with cross-functional exposure. This role is for developing practitioners who can contribute to discovery, roadmap input, and delivery with general direction from a lead, while growing their ability to operate independently. AI-native tooling accelerates execution — your job is to direct it toward the right outcomes for customers.

AI-native tooling handles a significant portion of what product managers and UX designers have historically spent their time on. That time is yours to redirect toward higher-leverage work. Specifically:

• Spec writing: AI drafts the first spec from your intent statement. You review, sharpen, and own what gets built.
• UX design: AI generates mockups from the design system based on your flow definitions. Experience Architects maintain the system itself. You make the product decisions within it.
• Research synthesis: AI clusters and themes interview notes, call transcripts, and support data. You interpret what it means for the roadmap and make the call.
• Release content: AI generates release notes, in-app announcements, and enablement materials from your shipped features.
• Code review: Automated review catches style, security, and regression issues. You stay accountable for quality outcomes — not the review queue.
• Test coverage: AI generates test cases from the acceptance criteria you write. Your job is to write criteria that are precise enough to verify.
• Competitive intelligence: AI monitors competitor moves and surfaces market signals. You form the point of view and decide what it means for your roadmap.

What AI does not do: understand your customers, make the call on what matters, own the outcome, or build the cross-functional trust that makes things ship. That is the job.

You'll own:

• Define and communicate the product vision for your area — grounded in customer research, competitive context, and business goals; not inherited from committee.
• Conduct and synthesize customer discovery: translate what you hear into clear, defensible decisions about what to build and what to cut.
• Own the product roadmap: prioritize ruthlessly, explain your reasoning publicly, and revise it when new facts warrant it.
• Define user experience flows and interaction patterns within the design system; escalate to Experience Architects when genuinely new system-level patterns are required.
• Write clear intent documents that AI tooling can execute against; review and own AI-generated specs for accuracy, completeness, and correctness.
• Partner with engineering to unblock builds, resolve ambiguity in real time, and make decisions during the development cycle without becoming a bottleneck.
• Track adoption, usage, and business outcome metrics; use them to drive the next iteration, not just to report status.
• Represent your product in customer conversations, QBRs, and cross-functional reviews — the full commercial picture, not just the feature set.
• Identify gaps in AI harnesses and design system coverage; surface them as platform investment requests with clear business justification.

Qualifications & Preferred Experience:

• 2–4 years of experience in product management, software engineering, or a closely adjacent technical role.
• Ability to contribute to and navigate cross-functional engineering projects, with awareness of how your work connects to system architecture and broader team goals.
• Experience conducting customer or stakeholder interviews, or translating technical requirements and user research into actionable engineering specs.
• Solid written and verbal communication; can explain technical tradeoffs clearly, provide project updates, and incorporate feedback at key milestones.
• Adapts to changing priorities and demonstrates a track record of shipping reliably.
• Developing comfort with AI-assisted development workflows (e.g., AI-assisted coding, code review, or testing tools); willingness to become proficient is required.
• Familiarity with design systems, component-based architecture, or API/data modeling is a plus.
• Experience with modern SaaS architecture (APIs, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD) preferred.

How This Level Is Differentiated:

• Contributes to cross-functional projects and adapts to changing needs; viewed as a reliable team member.
• Provides regular updates and receives feedback at key milestones; developing strong listening and communication skills.
• Understands specific functional areas and applies expertise to contribute to company goals.
• Works within their function and occasionally interfaces in cross-program relationships.
• Identifies and articulates problems, extracts simple insights, and proposes solutions within scope.

Compensation: Boston, MA: $110,000 - $125,000 On target ranges above include base plus a portion of variable compensation that is earned based on company and individual performance. The final compensation will be determined by a number of factors such as qualifications, expertise, and the candidate's geographical location.