Forward-Deployed Technical Product Manager

Who We Are

Impruve is a boutique forward-deployed engineering firm that helps wealth management firms get real business results from AI. We embed directly with our clients to build production data pipelines, AI tools, custom software, and compliance infrastructure for top-tier firms managing billions in client assets. We have more demand than we can currently serve, and we're growing the team to meet it.

Our founders previously built and exited Packback, an AI company that served more than 3 million users. We operate with the speed of a small startup and the rigor of a top firm.

We're four engineers right now, and we're building how we work on purpose, not backfilling a culture after the fact. We care about doing right by clients and by each other. We take the work seriously: real client money, real compliance risk, real production systems. We do team-wide retros every two months to make sure we're all on the same page and continually improving.

We pair early and often, across the team, because it's how we actually get better. If you notice something interesting mid-task, we want you to flag it and pull someone in, not disappear down a rabbit hole solo. When something breaks, we run blameless postmortems; the point is fixing the system, not finding someone to blame.

We don't expect you to walk in with all the answers. Nobody here has them either. We expect you to be scrappy: willing to try something, see what happens, and figure it out with the team rather than wait until you're sure.

You won't be joining something fully formed. You'd be joining our founding engineering team, with real say in how this team works, not just what it ships.

Why This Role

Most wealth management firms want AI in their business and have access to the frontier models. What’s missing is someone who can sit between the business and the engineering team and turn ambiguous client needs into production systems that actually change how they operate. That’s the gap this role fills.

We don’t build a SaaS product. We build products for clients. You’d be the person who owns the shape of what gets built: gathering requirements, managing stakeholders, prototyping solutions, and making sure the engineering team is building the right thing. You’d work embedded with our clients, shoulder to shoulder with our engineers.

What You’ll Do

• Own the Client Relationship: You’re the person a $5B RIA calls when they want to automate their compliance review process but can’t articulate what that means yet. You embed with their team, earn trust across the org chart, and stay candid about what’s realistic, including the hard conversations about what we won’t build.

• Turn Fuzzy Goals Into Shipped Systems: Clients come to us with “we want AI in our workflow.” Your job is to figure out which workflow, why it matters, and what “done” looks like, then write the requirements that engineers can actually build against. You own the outcome through delivery, not just the spec.

• Prototype Before We Commit: Before we put an engineer on something for two weeks, you’ve already built a rough version with Claude and put it in front of the client’s ops team to see if it actually solves the problem. You test assumptions with real users, not slide decks.

• Be the Person Who Speaks Both Languages: You can sit in a client’s quarterly planning meeting and hear what they’re actually asking for underneath the buzzwords, then turn around and have a real conversation with engineers about whether that’s a RAG pipeline or a rules engine, and why it matters.

• Juggle Multiple Clients Without Dropping Anything: You’ll run two or three engagements at once. That means knowing which client needs a check-in call and which one needs you to leave the engineers alone for a week. You make good calls with incomplete information and flag early when something’s off.

• Run Our Own House on AI: We tell clients to rebuild their operations around AI, so ours have to be better. You’ll build agents that automate how we manage projects, track engagements, and surface risks. If a process at Impruve is manual and repetitive, you’re the person who makes it not.

• Shape the Firm: You’d have a real hand in how we run engagements and how Impruve scales. We’re building a practice, not just executing projects.

What You’ll Bring to the Team

• 2+ Years in a Hybrid Product / Technical Role: Product management, technical project management, solutions engineering, or an engineering role where you were the person talking to stakeholders. Consulting and services backgrounds count.

• Technical Fluency: You don’t need to be a full-time engineer, but you can read code, understand system architecture, and have an informed opinion about build-vs-buy and technical tradeoffs. Engineers trust your judgment.

• Comfortable in the Room: You hold your own in front of clients. You can explain technical concepts without oversimplifying or hiding behind jargon, including the hard conversations about scope and tradeoffs.

• AI-Native, Not AI-Curious: You don’t just use AI tools. You build with them. You’ve prototyped with Claude or similar, you’ve automated parts of your own workflow, and you have opinions about what works and what doesn’t. We’re an AI firm. If you’re still in the “experimenting” phase, this role will move too fast.

• Bias for Outcomes: You judge your own work by what changed for the client, not by what you produced.

• Scrappy and Curious: You’d rather try something and see what happens than wait until you’re certain. You don’t need prior experience in wealth management or financial services; we’ll teach you the domain.

Compensation

$130,000 to $200,000 all-cash compensation.

Our Workplace

We work on a hybrid in-person / remote schedule from our Chicago office, but we're open to fully remote for candidates outside Chicago. Close collaboration is part of how we build, and we make remote work well.

Different Perspectives Make Us Better

Research consistently shows that women and people from underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to a role unless they check every box, while others apply anyway. If that's you:

apply anyway

. We care more about curiosity, scrappiness, and kindness than a perfect resume match, and we build a better team when the people on it don't all think alike.

Hiring Process

We respect your time. We keep the hiring process tight and decide quickly:

• Intro call (45 minutes).

• Team interview with the founders, including a working session on a realistic engineering problem.

• Decision and offer.

Requires US work authorization; we can't sponsor visas.