Senior Technical Product Manager

The American Journalism Project’s Product and AI Studio is seeking a Senior Technical Product Manager to be the primary day-to-day owner of our work with portfolio organizations to build and scale AI-powered tools. The first focus area of this work will be an early-stage fundraising tool, and this role will be responsible for maturing it from a minimum viable product into a trusted asset.

This is a rare opportunity to shape AI products from the ground up, and have direct influence on how nonprofit newsrooms in our portfolio approach product development and applications of technology. You’ll have direct access to users, clear mission alignment, and the autonomy to make real product decisions in service of rebuilding sustainable local news across the country.

This role is funded for an initial two-year period. Continuation beyond that term is subject to future funding and strategic priorities.

Who we are

We’re a small but entrepreneurial team working to re-shape the future of local news in our country. We’re passionate about journalism, civic engagement, and how local news plays a unique role in shaping our democracy. We help build and grow sustainable local news organizations all over the country – through financial investment, venture support, and movement building – that are governed by, sustained by, and look like the public they serve. Learn about our portfolio.

AJP has raised over $240 million for the cause so far, and aims to catalyze enough investment in nonprofit local news to create thriving, equitable, public service-oriented newsrooms that increase civic engagement and make communities work better for their residents.

Our team is deeply connected to our mission and supportive of each others’ goals and overall well-being. We aim to be an organization where everyone feels heard, respected, and valued. We are an entirely remote, distributed team and strive to maintain a healthy, fun, and productive workplace, working alongside smart, energetic colleagues who enjoy one another and the work. Meet our full team.

Our values

• Local First: We know that local journalism must serve and be led by local communities. We make a practice of listening to, and making decisions with – not for – those communities, and connecting them to find strength in each other.
• Bold Leadership: We understand the severe economic challenge facing local news and thus democracy, and we embrace a sense of possibility with courage, urgency, and perseverance.
• Constant Learning: We recognize the unknown in front of us. Therefore, we operate with humility and a commitment to continuous improvement and collaboration.
• Commitment to Equity: We commit to creating a better, more diverse, and more inclusive news media that advances human and civil rights. We actively fight against injustice and racism, and that starts with doing the work ourselves.
• Integrity: We accept the responsibility of earning trust every day. We operate with honesty, transparency, dignity, and respect, and without allegiance to party, ideology, profit, or power.

Your team

Launched in 2023, the Product & AI Studio is an innovation and insights program focused on smart, responsible adoption of technology and AI in local news. The Studio explores how generative AI and other emerging technologies can strengthen local news and better serve local communities. We share what we learn with the field via practical resources, including playbooks, case studies, and product reports.

Our team of industry experts provides hands-on, specialized support and targeted funding to news leaders as they experiment with new ways to connect with their communities, manifesting our driving values of constant learning and concrete local impact. You will report to the Technology Lead. The Studio is a small, collaborative team, and you’ll work closely with contracted engineering partners who handle primary development and infrastructure.

Compensation & benefits

Our total compensation package is competitive in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, and we are committed to supporting our team with what they need to show up every day ready to bolster the local press our democracy deserves.

We benchmark our salaries against similar organizations, and use a scale that considers job complexity and magnitude of responsibility to determine role levels and corresponding base salaries, as well as regular cost-of-living adjustments. The salary range for this position is $136,341 – $149,975. Read about our benefits here.

The position

This role is the day-to-day owner of the product pillar at AJP’s Product & AI Studio, responsible for ensuring the products we build become trusted, high-impact tools for grantee newsrooms. You will balance hands-on evaluation work with product strategy, user research, and delivery – working closely with newsroom leaders, internal stakeholders, and contract engineering partners to translate real-world needs into reliable, usable tools.

This is an early-stage product role. You’ll bring rigor to AI quality and evaluation while shaping workflows, integrations, and product direction in partnership with the Technology Lead. Early in the role, a significant portion of your time will focus on our first product (more information included below), including evaluation and quality improvement; over time, as the product stabilizes, your focus will shift toward workflow design, integrations, and adoption across newsrooms and working with the Product & AI Studio team to develop the long term product strategy.

Specific responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Build, prioritize and improve the product throughout the development cycle

• Scope, prioritize, and ship product improvements in collaboration with contract engineering partners, including reviewing features prior to release.
• Contribute hands-on technical work when it meaningfully accelerates delivery, such as prototyping workflows, refining prompt systems, or improving internal tooling.
• Synthesize insights from evaluation, user feedback, and usage data to inform product priorities, working with the Technology Lead to sequence improvements and surface trade-offs.
• Lead regular conversations with end users and other stakeholders to understand workflows, test features, and identify where the product creates (or fails to create) value.

Ensure AI output quality, reliability and performance

• Design and maintain evaluation frameworks for AI outputs, including reviewing model behavior, identifying drift or failure modes, and translating findings into concrete improvements.
• Write test cases, refine prompts, run regressions, and set quality standards for accuracy, tone, and appropriateness in nonprofit fundraising contexts.
• Monitor system health and product usage patterns to identify and mitigate risks and ensure reliable performance.

Drive adoption and translate insights for portfolio and field-wide learning

• Improve usability and onboarding, and build the documentation and enablement materials needed to support adoption across the portfolio.
• Contribute to insights reports, briefings, and public presentations about the product, in collaboration with the Product & AI Studio team.
• Some travel required – roughly 6-8 trips annually.

The first focus area

The first problem we’re prioritizing in the product pillar: Local newsrooms typically have small fundraising teams managing relationships with hundreds or thousands of donors. They’re writing thank-you notes, drafting proposals, creating impact reports, and doing donor research – all while trying to keep up with a newsroom producing stories daily. Generic AI tools don’t understand journalism fundraising, and teams have to operate with limited bandwidth. .

This Senior Technical Product Manager’s first charge will be developing a product that will enable nonprofit newsrooms to turn donor data and newsroom content into personalized outreach – without starting from scratch every time. The tool integrates with a newsroom’s existing data (CRM, Google Docs, story archives, etc.) and combines it with AJP’s deep experience in fundraising best practices to help fundraising teams:

• Draft high-quality, personalized correspondence
• Generate first-draft proposals for major gifts, incorporating recent impact stories
• Create donor-specific impact summaries showing how contributions supported coverage
• Identify angles and examples that resonate with different donor segments

Early pilots validated the approach: fundraisers report that the tool’s journalism-specific outputs saved them time while outperforming generic AI tools that don’t understand newsroom fundraising.

Who you are

We know not all strong candidates will have all the skills we list. That’s OK. Research shows that women and people of color are less likely to apply for a position if they don’t meet every skill listed. At AJP, we are committed to creating a better, more diverse, and more inclusive news ecosystem, and that starts with doing the work ourselves. So if your past experience doesn’t align perfectly, but you know this is the role for you – please tell us!

An ideal candidate will bring many of the following:

• Demonstrated experience in product management roles, including overseeing an entire product development cycle from concept to launch
• Hands-on experience building, deploying, or meaningfully improving an AI-powered product, including using evaluation or feedback loops to improve quality over time.
• Sufficient technical depth to evaluate engineering work, ask good architectural questions, and push back when needed – even when you are not the primary implementer.
• Familiarity with modern web-based products and infrastructure concepts (e.g., APIs, integrations, version control, deployment workflows), and an ability to reason about systems, dependencies, and failure modes.
• A nuanced understanding of responsible AI use – including data privacy, appropriate use boundaries, and thoughtful judgment about when automation should support (not replace) human decision-making.
• Strong product judgment and the ability to operate with limited precedent, making informed trade-offs as goals and constraints evolve, and to communicate and collaborate with others to navigate decisions with uncertain outcomes.
• Comfort working closely with engineers, designers, and non-technical nonprofit professionals (e.g. development directors, operations staff, or executives), translating between technical systems and real-world workflows.
• An interest in nonprofit journalism, fundraising, or mission-driven technology, and a desire to learn from newsroom partners and collaborators. Experience in the field is a plus but not required.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex ideas to non-technical audiences and synthesize feedback into actionable insights.

This role is a fit if you are:

• Energized by early-stage work where you’re defining the path forward, not following a playbook – and motivated by building something genuinely useful.
• Comfortable as the primary owner of a product, balancing autonomy with collaboration, and willing to work on whatever moves the product forward (including the unglamorous parts).
• Committed to responsible AI adoption: you take data privacy seriously, believe AI should serve clear goals (not be used for its own sake), and invest time in evaluation and iteration to build tools people can trust.
• Drawn to mission-driven work and curious about how technology can support nonprofit journalism, even if this isn’t your background today.

What to expect in the hiring process

Our approach to hiring is to create a consistent and transparent process for all candidates. We hope to fill this role as soon as possible, though the hiring process can typically take from a few weeks to several months. We will do our best to communicate with you about timing expectations throughout the process. Please note, every application is reviewed by at least one member of our team, if not more, and we do not use AI or automated tools to screen candidates.

Candidates who advance to later rounds of this process can expect multiple interviews with members of our hiring committee. Semi-finalists will be asked to complete a technical hiring exercise designed to help us understand your thinking and approach to the role, and you will be offered an optional prep session to ask any questions that will help you put your best foot forward in this process. We aim to truly get to know you, to help you fully understand the role you’re applying for, and to get to know your prospective team.

Please submit an application through our portal. Download the full job description here. If you have any questions, please feel free to email careers@theajp.org with “Senior Technical Product Manager” in the subject line.

Information Session

We will hold a webinar-style information session on Zoom on Tuesday, April 14, at 6:00pm ET. During this session, you will hear directly from the hiring manager and other key staff at AJP, and you will have an opportunity to ask questions. To register, please click here. The session will be recorded and posted on our website.

The American Journalism Project is dedicated to equal employment opportunities for all applicants and employees. AJP encourages people of all races, colors, national origins, ancestries, creeds, religions, genders, ages, disabilities, veteran status, sexual orientations, and marital statuses to apply.

AJP complies with federal and state disability laws and makes reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact careers@theajp.org.

Compensation & benefits

Our total compensation package is competitive in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, and we are committed to supporting our team with what they need to show up every day ready to bolster the local press our democracy deserves.

We benchmark our salaries against similar organizations, and use a scale that considers job complexity and magnitude of responsibility to determine role levels and corresponding base salaries, as well as regular cost-of-living adjustments. The salary range for this position is $136,341 – $149,975. Read about our benefits here.

English Proficiency.