Product Manager, Platform Tools

About the role

You will own the roadmap for a brand-new Risk platform at Column, turning a vision into a shipped product that defines how the company evaluates and accepts risk at scale. You will be the first Product Manager Column has ever hired to do this, operating with high agency in a brand-new domain where there is no inherited roadmap and no legacy backlog to guide you. You will design the productized version of how Column knows something is wrong, translating tribal knowledge and spreadsheets into a structured, scalable risk infrastructure. You will decide where AI should support sensitive risk judgments and where human oversight must remain mandatory, shaping the guardrails that keep the platform safe as volume grows. You will work hand-in-hand with the Founder/CEO, General Counsel, and Chief Compliance Officer to translate regulatory realities and user needs into clear product requirements. You will write the specifications and PRDs that engineering will build against, and you will roll up your sleeves to push code and validate implementations where you can. The platform you build will start as an internal safeguard and evolve into an external product that customers can use to strengthen their own risk operations, turning a protection layer for Column into a shield for the broader financial ecosystem. Your work will directly influence how fast Column can grow, how many partners we can onboard, and how confidently we can enter new markets without compromising safety.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Define and own the end-to-end roadmap for Column's Risk platform, translating a blank slate into a prioritized product backlog and execution plan.
• Architect the risk decisioning fabric of the company, designing workflows, data models, and interfaces that make risk evaluation consistent, transparent, and auditable.
• Determine the optimal split between machine-driven and human-in-the-loop decisions for sensitive risk scenarios, balancing accuracy, speed, and compliance.
• Partner directly with the Founder/CEO, General Counsel, and Chief Compliance Officer to surface regulatory constraints, operational realities, and stakeholder expectations.
• Translate complex risk policies and controls into clear product requirements, acceptance criteria, and user stories that engineering can implement.
• Build and monitor core risk metrics, using statistical analysis and operational data to validate model behavior and drive iterative improvements.
• Collaborate with engineering and data science to prototype risk features, run experiments, and iterate based on observed performance and edge cases.
• Externalize internal risk tooling into customer-facing APIs and configuration options, enabling partners to leverage Column's safeguards in their own products.
• Maintain a pragmatic bias for action, favoring fast, testable increments over theoretical perfection while documenting decisions for future scalability.
• Act as the primary product voice for risk across the company, aligning sales, customer success, and compliance teams on capabilities and limitations.

Requirements

• 4+ years in a high agency, fast-moving role such as product management at a high-growth startup, technology company, top-tier management consulting firm, or investment firm.
• A track record of taking messy, undefined problems and shipping real solutions, not just drafting plans or frameworks.
• Ability to get technical quickly, feeling comfortable in the terminal, using tools like Claude code or similar environments, and understanding how to architect basic solutions.
• Strong analytical instincts, with comfort working directly with data, metrics, and operational details at a granular level.
• A scrappy, roll-up-your-sleeves attitude with zero ego when it comes to hands-on building and troubleshooting.
• Familiarity with banking and fintech workflows preferred, though not required; genuine curiosity and a commitment to becoming an expert in this domain is mandatory.
• Willingness to engage deeply with legal, compliance, and risk stakeholders, interpreting regulatory language into product constraints and opportunities.
• Comfort operating in an environment with limited process, where ownership and judgment are more important than job titles or rigid playbooks.

Nice to have

• Experience shipping products that handle financial risk, fraud detection, or transaction monitoring in production environments.
• Prior collaboration with engineering and data science teams to build models or decisioning logic used in production.
• Understanding of regulatory frameworks such as anti-money laundering (AML), know your customer (KYC), and sanctions screening.
• Exposure to banking infrastructure, core banking systems, and the financial services supply chain involving users, fintechs, middleware providers, banks, and central infrastructure.
• Experience defining metrics and experiments that prove product impact in complex, regulated environments.

Practical notes

This role is based in-person at Column's Presidio office in San Francisco, with an expectation of 3-4 days per week onsite. The position is full-time, and the compensation package includes comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans with extensive company coverage, family planning and fertility benefits through Carrot, a monthly rent subsidy for employees within two miles of the office, and FSA/HSA options. Only candidates who are authorized to work in the United States need apply.