Technical Product Manager

Senior Technical Product Manager

Organisation: Vowels of the People Association (VOPA) - vopa.in

Employment Type: Full-time

Location: Pune (onsite)

Experience Required: 5 to 9 years (strong 4-year candidates with exceptional shipping records will be considered) We are hiring a builder-style Senior TPM. You will sit deep inside the engineering team, work directly with founders, and be accountable for

what gets built, why it gets built, and whether it actually works - for a user base that ranges from a rural teacher on a low-end Android phone to a state education secretary reading a dashboard. This is not a coordination role. This is an execution and ownership role. What You Will Do

• Own product execution end-to-end: idea → spec → build → launch → measure → iterate
• Write crisp, no-BS PRDs, user stories, and acceptance criteria
• Translate real user problems into technically feasible solutions
• Make hard prioritization calls under tight timelines — including during state-wide assessment drives where our systems handle 150K+ requests per minute
• Work daily with engineers on architecture, APIs, data flows, and trade-offs
• Partner with design to ship fast, usable UX for low-bandwidth, low-literacy, first-time smartphone contexts
• Define success metrics, instrument them (we run GA4, Mixpanel, Play Console), and kill features that don't move the needle
• Handle government and partner stakeholders with maturity — understand what SCERT, district officers, and CSR funders each need, and translate that into product decisions
• Mentor junior product/ops team members as we scale
• Act as the final product decision-maker when needed What We Expect From You
• You understand how software is built, not just how it's planned
• You can challenge engineers on technical trade-offs and earn their respect
• You don't need perfect data to make decisions — but you know when data is non-negotiable
• You are socially aware: you can read a room, whether it's a government review meeting or a village school visit, and you genuinely respect the users we serve
• You move fast, communicate clearly, and take responsibility for outcomes
• You care deeply about users, not just features Must-Have Skills
• 5–9 years as a Product Manager / Technical Product Manager, with at least 2 years owning a technical product end-to-end
• Strong grasp of backend systems, APIs, databases, and system design
• Experience shipping in fast-moving, resource-constrained environments
• Ability to break complex, ambiguous problems into simple, executable plans
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Proven track record of shipping products, not slide decks Nice to Have
• Experience with mobile apps (Android / React Native) at consumer scale
• Familiarity with FastAPI, Django, or similar backend frameworks
• Exposure to AI/ML products — you don't need to train models, but you should understand what they can and can't do
• Background in ed-tech, health-tech, govtech, or consumer-facing products
• Experience working with government systems, or products for Bharat-first / low-resource users
• Marathi or Hindi fluency What This Role Is NOT
• Not a project manager or delivery manager
• Not a Jira/ClickUp ticket mover
• Not a "collect requirements and wait" role Why Join
• High ownership, high trust, high expectations
• Direct access to founders and real decision-making power
• Your product decisions reach 5 million children every month
• Speed, learning, and responsibility from day one How We Hire Credentials and brand names on your resume matter less than demonstrated judgment. Selection is based on how you think and what you've shipped — evaluated through your application note, a practical exercise, and conversations with the founders and engineering team. How to Apply Apply via this job link with your resume,

and send us a DM with the following (max 400 words): A state assessment drive starts in 10 days. The government partner requests a new report format, teachers are complaining about a slow screen, and engineering wants to fix a data bug. You can only do two. DM us your call and reasoning in 300 words. No generic frameworks. We want to see how

you actually think and operate. We move fast. So should you.