As our second Product Lead at Tern, you’ll join a company that strives to be one of the best-operating R&D organizations in the world. We’re looking for someone who thrives on intensity, ownership, constant growth, and is excited to dive into an early stage, fast growing startup.
A few things that make Tern a unique place to work:
Product management is “full stack” - from user research, to product development, to QA, to launching features and communicating with users about them. We believe owning the end to end process leads to better results - you hear pain points directly from users, you work with design and engineering to fix them, and then you make sure the updates you ship actually address what you heard.
We’re user obsessed - we live in our advisor Facebook group and feedback community and jump on multiple research calls every week. We lean into negative feedback with curiosity, and seek to rapidly fix the problems we hear. When we don’t have enough user context we feel it in our bones - and fix it immediately.
Every squad at Tern ships features, engineering improvements, and quality-of-life updates weekly. That cadence is really intense - and incredibly rewarding. Projects have to be well scoped into shippable chunks based on the most important user needs. Testing and documentation has to happen immediately to unblock bug fixing and rollouts. Getting this right is difficult - but allows us to add value for our users and learn something new every single week.
We’re leveling up how we work by integrating AI throughout our product development process - from research and PRD writing, to prototyping, to kicking off PRs for inbound issues ourselves. As a Product Lead, you’ll be expected to lean into these new tools and help us redefine what a next-generation product org looks like.
Own a product area or squad end-to-end, shipping valuable user-facing work every single week
Drive product discovery with an obsessive focus on our travel advisors - through user calls, async feedback loops, and using the product yourself
Write exceptionally clear PRDs, slicing initiatives into focused, shippable parts that deliver value fast without overworking the team
Operate as the connective tissue between users, engineering, design, and go-to-market, bringing clarity, context, and ruthless prioritization
Use AI (and help us innovate how we use AI) across research, iteration, planning, and execution
Ensure tight feedback loops and empower teammates to move fast with autonomy and confidence
Constantly level up how we work: from process to quality bar to culture of ownership
Deeply understand and track our product quality - raising the bar proactively, not reactively
Make sure nothing falls through the cracks - we value people who hold it all in their head and notice what others miss
Clear thinking under pressure; an ability to simplify chaos and get to the root of the problem
Extreme ownership - you take responsibility for the outcome, not just your part of it
Obsessive attention to detail; you’re the kind of person who notices the edge case no one else brought up
Strong product instincts, with a feel for what great looks like (or hunger to get there)
Excellent communication - crisp writing, contextual thinking, and ability to bring stakeholders along without over-managing
Comfort with pace - we ship weekly and expect product to lead the prioritization and scoping that makes that sustainable
A builder mindset - bias to action, comfort with ambiguity, and hunger to learn and improve rapidly
Experience in fintech or travel (especially B2B2C platforms or marketplaces)
Strong familiarity with AI tools (especially prompting, prototyping, or workflows in product)
We’re always leveling up.
Whether you’re deepening your craft, learning from a teammate, or embracing a new challenge, growth is core to our identity.
We act with optimistic agency.
We take initiative, seek clarity, and move forward, even when the path isn't obvious. Through every peak and valley, we lead with curiosity, laughter, kindness, and resolve.
We expect operational excellence.
We ship value to our users every single week. We believe that compounding habits lead to sustainable productivity, consistency, and mutual trust.
Operating Principles:
We deeply understand our users.
At every level of the organization, we obsess about understanding those we serve and the industry we operate in.
➕ We embrace the power of and, and not now.
We challenge trade-offs by asking better questions. We break hard problems into small pieces and tackle them with intention. We also know to make the hard call to say “not right now”.
We speak up and move forward.
Everyone at Tern has a voice and a responsibility to use it. We invite healthy tension, share dissenting views early, and challenge each other with curiosity, not ego.
♀️➡️ We move fast and sweat the details.
Velocity matters and relentless progress beats perfection every time. But speed isn’t chaos: we stay aligned, own our outcomes, and care deeply about quality.
We take the work seriously, but not ourselves.
We hire kind, driven people who elevate the room. If you’ve got a big ego or take yourself too seriously, you won’t last.
Be part of a mission-driven team transforming the travel planning space
Work with a supportive, curious, and creative team
Influence and shape our user success strategy from the ground up
Competitive salary, equity, and benefits package
Tern is committed to building a team that represents people from many different backgrounds and life experiences, reflecting our worldview coinciding with the users and customers we serve across the world. We prefer that you apply, so think of our postings as the start of the conversation. Take the chance — you may be a wonderful add to our Tern team, even if you don’t fully match every requirement on the job description.