Founding Product Manager (Vals Smith)

Directly focused on model evaluation to reduce "vibe" decisions — hands-on with evaluations and POCs, so it's closely tied to vibe coding and model-evaluation workflows. About the Role Founding Product Manager to own the product roadmap and go-to-market for Vals Smith, an enterprise product that evaluates which foundation model is best for a customer's use case. You will run customer discovery and POCs, scope technical evaluations, shape pricing and packaging, and work closely with engineering, design, and GTM teams to drive activation and recurring revenue. Job Description Role We are hiring a founding Product Manager to lead Vals Smith, an enterprise product that determines which foundation model is best for a customer’s use case. The PM will own the loop between enterprise customer needs and shipped product, driving discovery, scoping, and delivery of features that enable repeatable revenue. Key Responsibilities Own the product roadmap for Vals Smith and prioritize discovery and delivery with design and engineering. Run discovery with design partners and ship onboarding, repo ingestion, results UX, integrations, and demo/POC environments. Serve as the technical counterpart in customer evaluations and POCs; scope engagements with customers’ CTOs or Heads of AI. Build and optimize the activation funnel from signup to recurring usage. Drive pricing and packaging decisions with founders and GTM; own usage instrumentation and analysis to inform pricing. Requirements 2+ years in a technical, customer-facing role (e.g., forward-deployed engineer, solutions engineer, technical PM, ML engineer with customer engagements). Technical degree (CS, EE, Math) and prior IC engineering experience; able to write code for scoping evals, experiments with customer data, and prototypes. Demonstrated ability to lead technical engagements end-to-end (from initial conversation to scoped SOW to delivered eval). Strong written and verbal communication and credibility with senior buyers. Ability to work in-person in San Francisco (relocation support provided). What We Offer Competitive salary and meaningful ownership. Relocation and transportation support; $1,500 housing stipend (within one-mile radius). Full health, dental, and vision insurance. Lunch and dinner provided; free snacks, coffee, and drinks. 401(k) plan and unlimited PTO. Company / Context Vals builds evaluation tooling for foundation models and has roots in Stanford NLP evaluation research. Early customers include large enterprises conducting model selection and POCs; the company recently closed a $40M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz. Skills Product Roadmapping Customer Discovery Technical Scoping Stakeholder Management Cross-functional Collaboration Prototyping Experimentation Data Instrumentation & Analysis Pricing & Packaging Communication Customer-facing Sales/POC Execution Ownership Experience Level Mid USD 150,000 - 200,000/year Employment Type Full-time Full health insurance Dental insurance Lunch and dinner provided Free snacks/coffee/drinks $1,500 housing stipend (within one-mile radius) #J-18808-Ljbffr Vibehackers