Senior Manager, Product Operations
Instawork
| Company | Instawork |
| Category | Operations & Admin |
| Location | Chicago |
| Remote | On-site (inferred) |
| Employment | Not stated |
| Level | Manager |
| Salary | Not stated by the employer |
| Posted | 4 Mar 2026 |
| Last verified | 12 Aug 2026 |
| Source | Employer ATS (greenhouse) |
Description
Instawork is on a mission to create meaningful economic opportunities for skilled hourly professionals in communities around the globe. Our AI-powered labor marketplace helps local businesses scale, and enables global technology companies to push the frontiers of robotics and AI. Backed by world-class investors like Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock, Y Combinator, and others, we’re looking for exceptional talent to reimagine the way the world works. We are seeking a Senior Manager of Product Operations to help us transition from an app-based marketplace to an agent-first world. We believe the future of work isn't about browsing feeds or tapping buttons - it’s about having intelligent agents that work on your behalf. We need a technical operator who can bridge the gap between high-level business goals and this new user interface. You won't just optimize processes; you will prototype the logic, agents, and automation layers that fundamentally change how our Pros and Partners experience the platform.
Who You Are:
An Architect of the "Agent-First" World: You understand that the next iteration of the internet is not point-and-click, but intent-and-action. You see a future where users interact with our marketplace through conversation and delegation, not just navigation.
A UX Builder, Not Just a Process Fixer: You realize that in an AI world, "Operations" is the Product. You are obsessed with reducing user friction, believing that if a human has to manually search or sift through data, the agent has failed.
An AI Pragmatist: You know how to deploy the right model for the job. You distinguish between where a reasoning model is needed to handle complex user intent versus where a deterministic script suffices.
A "Hands-On" Visionary: You don't just write specs for Engineering; you prototype the solution yourself. You are comfortable building the first version of an agentic workflow to prove it works before we scale it globally.
What You’ll Do:
Build the Agent-First Interface: Design and deploy agentic workflows that proactively manage the "work" for our users - turning passive browsing into a hands-free, autonomous experience where the app works for them.
Solve Marketplace Complexity: Prototype and implement intelligent systems that handle complex reasoning tasks (like liquidity balancing, preference matching, or real-time negotiation) to make the market feel alive and responsive.
From Strategy to Code: Act as the technical bridge, translating high-level business objectives into functional AI prototypes and automated pipelines that you build, test, and validate yourself.
Drive Data-Led Evolution: Use programmatic analysis to identify exactly where the current user journey is broken and deploy intelligent, self-healing layers to fix it in real-time.
Qualifications:
Technical & Engineering Fluency: 2+ years of engineering experience (or equivalent proficiency) with the ability to write code (Python/TypeScript) and use AI-native IDEs (Cursor, Replit) to build your own tools.
Applied AI Experience: Demonstrated history of building agents or automated workflows that take action, not just generate text. You know the difference between a prompt and a pipeline, and you know how to build both.
Operational Strategy: 5+ years in Product Ops, TPM, or similar, where you defined the "what" and "why" of a product strategy and then personally helped build the "how."
Nice To Have:
B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or Engineering.
A personal portfolio of AI projects that solve real-life problems.
Experience fine-tuning models for specific business or customer-facing use cases.
For IL based applicants:
The base salary for this position is $160,000 - $200,000
This position is eligible for equity in the form of stock options
This position is eligible for Instawork benefits, including:
A variety of medical, dental, and vision plans with co