Associate Product Manager

Position: Associate Product Manager Location: Princeton, NJ (Hybrid) Salary Range: $60,000 - $90,000, commensurate with experience Reports to: VP, Product ABOUT POPULUS HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES Founded in 2019, Populus is a virtual care media and technology company based in Princeton, New Jersey. We connect life science brands with patients and the healthcare professionals who treat them at the moment care consultations happen, and we measure that engagement with 1:1 attribution. We do this through three products: • Virtual Care Media reaches relevant patients during virtual care visits. • EHR Triggered Messaging delivers targeted display and inbox messaging to clinicians during diagnosis and treatment, with patient portal messaging available. • Custom Care takes consumers from product discovery through physician consultation to prescription fulfillment, in one online journey. We also run original research on where virtual care is going, including Virtual Care in America: The Populus Report, our benchmark study with DHC Group, PM360, and Researchscape. ROLE OVERVIEW We are hiring an Associate Product Manager, Product Operations to do two things: run the product-operations work behind every proposal we send, and, as you learn it, take that work apart and rebuild it with AI, treating the workflow as a product. Your work has to be accurate and it has to be on time, and much of it is manual and repeatable. That makes it a real place to learn what AI can and cannot do inside a business process. The job is to run this function first, then automate it as you learn it. You will learn the workflows well enough to know every step and every exception, automate the repeatable parts, and use the time it frees to learn the products behind the numbers. It is also how you learn product management, because the loop is the same one a product manager runs: find the problem, define what good looks like, build the fix, put it in the hands of the people who use it, and check whether it worked. You will work directly with the VP of Product and alongside Sales and Ad operations. This is a hands-on role in a function that is still taking shape, with room to ask questions and learn. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Run Product Operations (Pre-Sale) • Produce, manage, and quality-check HCP and health consumer audience counts and targeting estimates across Virtual Care Media and EHR Triggered Messaging to turnaround time and accuracy standards. • Manage and respond to inventory requests from the Sales team, using our inventory management tools. • Coordinate intake, track open items, and keep RFPs moving through the workflow during peak season. • Provide product and technical specification support to Sales on RFPs. Automate the Product Operations Workflow • Map the current counts, inventory, and RFP workflows step by step, and identify where time, errors, and rework build up. • Design, build, and maintain AI-assisted workflows, automations, and agents that take on the repeatable steps, connecting AI tools to our data and inventory tools where it makes sense. • Measure the effect of each automation on turnaround time and accuracy, and report plainly on what worked and what did not. • Document every workflow, prompt, and rule so that others can review it, take it over, and improve it. Learn the Products and Contribute to Them • Learn each product inside out: its capabilities and its value proposition to clients. • Turn what you see in requests and RFPs (recurring questions, gaps,) into written input the product team can prioritize. • Take on product management work with the VP of Product as you show you are ready for it. WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR • Hands-on AI experience. You use AI tools regularly for real work, can describe specific tasks you have done with them, and can explain where they got it wrong and how you caught it. This is a requirement, because it is the core of the job. • Willingness to build: you want to build automations and workflows with AI tools, not only use them, and you will learn no-code and light scripting tools as the work needs them. • Genuine interest in product management as a career, and curiosity about how each product works, sells, and is positioned. • A bachelor's degree is preferred, and equivalent hands-on work counts in its place. Early-career, with 1 to 3 years of professional experience. • Structured thinking: you can break a messy process into steps, see what is repeatable, and describe it clearly enough that a colleague or an AI can follow it. • Strong attention to detail and comfort with data; you can own the accuracy of a deliverable end to end. • Highly organized; you can juggle multiple concurrent requests and hit deadlines without being chased. • Comfortable working in Excel or Google Sheets. • Clear, concise written communication. • Wants to get better at the work every week and is comfortable when the process is still being figured out. NICE TO HAVE (NOT REQUIRED) • Project management experience. • Product or product operations experience. • You have built with AI beyond chat: automations, custom workflows, agents, light scripting, or connecting AI tools to other systems. If you have, lead with it. • A track record of turning messy, manual work into a clean, repeatable process. • Familiarity with healthcare, pharma, or media and advertising terms, such as ICD-10 coding, NPI targeting, audience estimation, or ad serving. WHERE THIS ROLE CAN GROW This role is a gateway into product management. As you automate the manual parts of counts, inventory, and RFP support, your work shifts from running the numbers to understanding and shaping the products behind them. You will build a documented record of systems you designed and measured, along with a working knowledge of each product and how it is sold. That is the foundation of product management, and the path here points toward full product ownership for someone who wants it and shows they are ready. WHY POPULUS? You will help build product operations at a company doing something new in pharma media: reaching patients and clinicians at the moment care is being decided, instead of interrupting them somewhere else. You will get more exposure than most early-career roles offer, across the full product suite and the whole pre-sales process, with a real hand in the proposals that win business. You will learn from senior people who want to see you grow. And every accurate count and tight proposal is part of how a treatment reaches the patient who needs it. AI is already part of how this team works, not something we hope to get to. We use it now in the count and RFP workflow, and you will have real tools and the time to build with them. You will report to a product leader who works the same way, so the things you build get used, not parked. Visa sponsorship is not available for this role. For clarity purposes, this means that Populus is not in a position now, or in the future, to offer US immigration sponsorship. This includes, but is not limited to, support of H-1B, TN, O-1, or F-1 e.g. EAD, OPT, CPT, I-20, F-1 visa stamp etc.