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Product Manager (LabOS Modularization)
PL Job Board
Product · Full-time
Remote
Posted on Sep 22, 2025
About Protocol Labs
Protocol Labs is an innovation network of more than 600 teams, projects, and movements, focused on R&D and deploying network protocols. Our teams are purpose-aligned and share a common mission: To drive breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. For us, decentralization is more than just a rallying cry; it’s an operational ethos and a belief system baked into the products we develop. Network members have been responsible for creating and building many of the core primitives that power the decentralized web: IPFS, IPLD, Filecoin, libp2p, and more. Even more, our focus goes beyond web3 protocols and spans a wide range of technologies, including neurotech, AI, virtual reality, and more. For more information on Protocol Labs and our focus areas, please watch Juan Benet’s talk from PL Summit 2023 and the 2024 PL Summit Video (Remote Update).
About Polaris
As an innovation network rooted in a culture of collaboration, Protocol Labs requires a fresh approach to advancing emerging technologies. Polaris builds the infrastructure that enables Protocol Labs teams, projects, and movements, and members to flourish. Our key focus areas include digital human rights, upgrading economies and governance systems, safe AI, and neurotech. We create the programs, tools, and events that connect, strengthen, and build the teams that drive breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. We manage network membership and track network data to continuously gauge the growth and state of maturity of Protocol Labs across a number of critical pillars, and manage the Protocol Labs brand and strategic marketing initiatives. At the core of everything Polaris does, is the Protocol Labs mission and the desire to progress innovation.
About the LabOS Product Team
The LabOS Product team within Polaris is building the unified software platform for the Protocol Labs network, enabling members to discover and connect with each other to enhance collaboration across mission-critical technologies. LabOS currently includes a Directory of Members, Teams and Projects; An Event and Gatherings management system, A Forum and more. Our next chapter is modularization: establishing stable interfaces and a contributor experience that enables other teams to build quality modules in the open. This direction is already taking shape: LabOS itself is open source and one app built by through the Protocol Labs Dev Guild program has been integrated into the LabOS Events and Gatherings management system.
About the Role
We are hiring a Product Manager to own LabOS modularization. You will define the strategy, interfaces, and contributor experience that enable network teams and partners to build high-quality modules within LabOS. You will own the end-to-end lifecycle of our “distributed product scaling” model: from designing APIs, SDKs, and plugin frameworks to establishing governance and quality gates that preserve product cohesion. Your first priority will be driving a high-impact pilot in partnership with another Polaris team who needs to build a new module within LabOS. From this pilot, you will develop the scaffolding and practices that allow many teams across the Protocol Labs network to contribute modules at scale.
Key Responsibilities
- Define and evolve the LabOS modularization strategy, contributor experience, and stable interfaces (APIs, SDKs, plugins)
- Lead the pilot module in partnership with another Polaris team, from scoping through rollout and quality gates
- Coordinate distributed building in LabOS by the Protocol Labs Dev Guild program
- Establish governance, contributor workflows, and documentation that make module development repeatable and scalable across teams
- Balance platform stability with contributor velocity through versioning, compatibility policies, and UX guidelines
- Partner with engineering and design to ensure modules meet performance, security, accessibility, and analytics standards
- Drive feedback loops with network teams and external contributors, iterating on developer experience and adoption
- Maintain clear reporting, metrics, and decision logs to track progress, risks, and ecosystem health
What We’re Looking For
Experience
- (Must have) 10+ years in product management, with 5+ years building platform or ecosystem products that support third-party or multi-team development
- (Must have) Proven track record of shipping modular or plugin-based consumer products in open source (e.g., GitLab, Mattermost, LibreOffice, Rocket.chat, Flarum, Lemmy, Lesswrong or similar products)
- Experience defining and scaling contributor workflows: SDKs, extension APIs, interface contracts, documentation, and community contribution practices
- Success leading pilots that evolve into repeatable models for distributed product building
- Background working with both internal teams and vendor/dev-shop partners to deliver production-grade modules
- Experience balancing UX cohesion with multi-team contributions in open ecosystems
Skills & Capabilities
- Fluency in product architecture concepts: auth, permissions/feature flags, routing, search, notifications, telemetry, experimentation
- Ability to define acceptance criteria and governance frameworks that preserve quality across distributed contributors
- Strong technical depth to reason about API design, versioning, performance budgets, and observability
- Excellent written communication for contributor docs, and stakeholder alignment
- Data-driven decision-making, using contributor funnels, feature adoption, and ecosystem health metrics
- Strong collaboration skills to align diverse stakeholders while empowering teams to build independently
Mindset & Approach
- Systems thinker who designs for reuse, composability, and long-term maintainability
- Pragmatic and delivery-focused, using pilots to validate and harden interfaces
- Passionate about UX cohesion and quality, while empathetic to contributor needs
- Comfortable operating transparently in open forums and distributed teams
- Builder of ecosystems, motivated by enabling others to ship at scale
Why Join Us?
- Build the product platform that enables hundreds of teams to contribute to a mission that matters
- Shape the contributor experience and interfaces powering the next phase of the Protocol Labs network
- Work with world-class builders across OSS, decentralized tech, AI, and advanced computing
- Operate with autonomy and ownership, with clear impact on how innovation scales across the network
PL Job Board is an equal opportunity employer.