Technical Project Manager & Business Analyst

Job Description

DBA Halcrya Technologies

Location: San Diego, CA — In Office

Reports to: Founder & CEO

Works closely with: Engineering leadership, engineers, and business stakeholders

Compensation: $35–$40 per hour, depending on experience.

Employment: Full-time, hourly

THE MISSION

Turn the founder’s vision, business knowledge, and intellectual property into clear product requirements that engineering can build, test, and deliver.

You will work directly with the CEO to capture ideas, ask precise questions, organize complex information, analyze business needs, and translate that knowledge into actionable product specifications. You will lead the back-and-forth needed to clarify what the application should do, how users should experience it, and what successful delivery looks like.

This is a hands-on role for someone who can move quickly between conversation, analysis, documentation, and execution. Success means engineering can pick up an approved work item and understand what to build, why it matters, and how it will be accepted.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

1. Capture and structure the founder’s knowledge

• Run focused discovery sessions with the CEO to extract business logic, product concepts, workflows, exceptions, priorities, and desired user experiences.

• Turn voice notes, meeting recordings, sketches, and scattered ideas into organized, searchable product knowledge.

• Ask follow-up questions, identify contradictions, and distinguish confirmed decisions from assumptions and unresolved questions.

• Maintain a searchable record of business rules, workflows, decisions, and revisions so another team member can pick up the work without relying on the founder’s memory.

2. Perform business and product analysis

• Define the user, problem, intended outcome, and business value behind each request.

• Map current and proposed workflows, user journeys, roles, permissions, data needs, integrations, and exception paths.

• Identify missing requirements, dependencies, duplicate requests, conflicting rules, and opportunities to simplify delivery.

• Separate the minimum useful release from later enhancements and recommend scope based on value, urgency, effort, and dependencies.

• Produce simple wireframes or annotated prototypes when visuals clarify the intended experience.

3. Prepare work engineering can execute

• Translate approved concepts into concise product briefs, feature specifications, epics where useful, and small executable work items.

• Write clear user stories or task descriptions with acceptance criteria, business rules, edge cases, dependencies, and relevant references.

• Define loading, empty, error, and permission states where relevant to the experience.

• Confirm readiness with engineering before work begins. Record the approved scope, accountable owner, agreed delivery date, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and evidence needed to verify completion.

• Keep scope and acceptance criteria current when decisions change.

4. Manage delivery and feedback

• Maintain the product backlog and delivery board in the company’s selected project management system.

• Coordinate priorities, owners, dependencies, milestones, and handoffs with engineering leadership.

• Flag blockers and at-risk commitments before deadlines slip. Bring the CEO a short list of decisions needed and use written updates to protect engineering focus time.

• Review demos against approved business requirements and capture specific feedback. Track business acceptance and link to QA and release status from the teams that own those checks.

• Coordinate business acceptance with the CEO and track changes through completion.

HOW YOU WILL USE AI

Use AI daily to accelerate transcription, knowledge extraction, workflow mapping, first drafts of requirements, backlog organization, and consistency checks. Build reusable templates and prompts so repeated work gets faster without losing accuracy.

An epic is an organizing container, not a complete engineering handoff. Our preferred approach is a living product specification linked to small, testable work items, supporting designs, and explicit acceptance criteria. Use epics when they help group related work.

AI-generated requirements must be checked against source conversations and confirmed decisions. Never convert an AI assumption into an approved requirement. Use company-approved tools and follow company policies for confidential information and intellectual property.

We may need to capture and structure more than 100 ideas or feature requests in a compressed period. You must be able to batch intake, identify duplicates, prioritize, and move the highest-value items into engineering readiness. The level of detail should match the complexity and risk of each item.

CORE DELIVERABLES

• A searchable product knowledge base and decision log.

• Prioritized backlog with clear ownership, status, and dependencies.

• Product briefs, workflow maps, and supporting wireframes.

• Engineering-ready work items with measurable acceptance criteria.

• A concise weekly CEO update showing what is in progress, who owns it, when it is due, what is blocked or at risk, what shipped, and which items passed business acceptance.

BACKGROUND AND SKILLS

• Early-career experience in technical project coordination, business analysis, product operations, or software delivery. Relevant internships and substantial project work count. Fintech experience is helpful and optional.

• Experience turning founder or stakeholder conversations into requirements that engineers successfully delivered.

• Working knowledge of web applications, APIs, databases, integrations, permissions, and the software development lifecycle.

• Ability to read technical documentation and discuss implementation constraints with engineers; production coding is not required.

• Practical experience using AI tools to accelerate analysis and documentation while verifying accuracy.

• Strong interviewing, analytical writing, process mapping, organization, and follow-through.

• Experience with tools such as ClickUp, Linear, Jira, or similar; familiarity with wireframing or prototyping tools.

• Ability to respectfully challenge unclear ideas, ask direct questions, and keep discovery moving toward decisions.

• Comfort working in office with a fast-moving founder and adapting as product understanding evolves.

FIRST 30 DAYS

• Establish the intake process, product knowledge base, decision log, and requirements template. Capture and prioritize the initial body of ideas and deliver the first approved engineering handoffs.

• Run a repeatable discovery-to-engineering process, expand the organized backlog, and support delivery of the first prioritized features.

• Demonstrate consistent throughput, fewer clarification loops, traceable decisions, and delivered features that match the CEO’s approved intent.

HOW SUCCESS IS MEASURED

• Speed from discovery to approved, engineering-ready requirements.

• Clarity and completeness of handoffs, measured through engineering feedback.

• Reduced rework caused by missing or misunderstood requirements.

• Reliable visibility into priorities, dependencies, blockers, and decisions.

• Delivered functionality that satisfies approved acceptance criteria.

This role owns product requirements, project coordination, and business acceptance with the CEO. Engineering owns architecture, estimates, and implementation. Technology Operations owns independent QA, release verification, security governance, and technical documentation standards.

APPLICATION

Share an example of an ambiguous idea you turned into a shipped feature. Explain how you captured requirements, clarified open questions, worked with engineers, and verified the result. Include a sanitized example of a specification, workflow, or project board you created.