Head of Product (SlateUp)

Alloy Partners (formerly High Alpha Innovation) is a venture builder with a radical thesis: we can build advantaged companies in partnership with corporations and entrepreneurs to unlock transformation and address society’s biggest challenges through startup creation.

In partnership with the University of Notre Dame, we launched 1842 Studio, a first-of-its-kind venture studio impact fund aligned with the university’s mission to fuel innovation through startup creation.

SlateUp, an 1842 Studio company, is a fast-growing platform built for frontline manufacturing talent. It connects workers with high-opportunity careers through AI-powered job matching, while helping employers showcase career pathways, training, and upskilling.

We’ve grown paying customers by 150% and the talent supply base by 200% quarter-over-quarter. Our product suite spans talent acquisition, retention, and workforce incentives, with strong early customer retention and market pull.

Backed by Alloy Partners and industry experts, we’re ready to scale. Now we need a product leader to take us there.

As Head of Product, you will inherit a functioning web app built on Bubble (no-code), integrated with Intercom and OpenAI. Your job is to drive rapid iteration, guide the product through its next phase of growth, and lead the transition to a scalable infrastructure.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can drive strategy, manage execution, and ship. You’ll work closely with the CEO, oversee freelance design and development contributors, and play a key role in product storytelling during fundraising.

What You'll Own

• Lead product strategy across employer, candidate, and internal stakeholder workflows with a focus on activation, retention, and value creation
• Build and ship features weekly in collaboration with freelance designers and no-code developers
• Manage the current no-code tech stack (Bubble, Intercom, OpenAI) and lead the planning and execution of our transition to a more scalable infrastructure
• Own the product roadmap and execution process, including backlog prioritization, QA, and on-time delivery
• Design and run tight customer feedback loops through user interviews, usability tests, and usage data
• Improve core marketplace dynamics including matching quality, messaging, and scheduling
• Drive applied use of AI features across profile enrichment, candidate filtering, and job matching
• You'll work across our current tech stack, which includes Bubble, OpenAI, Google Cloud, Weaviate, Twilio, Sendgrid, Intercom, and various other tools for messaging, analytics, design, and automation. A strong grasp of system-level thinking and an ability to manage and evolve third-party integrations will be key to success in this role.
• Collaborate closely with the CEO to define and articulate product direction, technical strategy, and execution progress during the fundraising process

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience building and shipping B2B or B2B2C SaaS products, ideally in marketplaces or HR tech
• Strong product intuition and a track record of hands-on execution from prototype through launch
• Experience managing or working with no-code tools, especially Bubble
• Ability to lead and manage freelance contributors across design and development
• Working knowledge of AI-powered product features, third-party integrations, and matching algorithms
• Excellent communication skills with a customer-first mindset and strong stakeholder management
• Comfort operating in high-ambiguity, fast-paced startup environments where action is expected
• Prior startup or founder experience preferred
• Home base in Chicago or Indianapolis.

Benefits

• Salary plus a significant equity plan
• A collaborative, entrepreneurial environment with a proven venture studio playbook
• A highly validated concept and business model hypothesis developed by our team, including verbal pilot commitments
• Pre-seed funding committed by our partner
• The support of the venture studio and platform services, we surround the startup with world-class expertise in every discipline required to build a market-leading company

What we value:

WE BUILD

We make decisions with imperfect information and quickly move forward. We take action. We are comfortable with discomfort, and we measure our results in terms of what we build.

WE ARE BOLD

We seek, uncover, and speak truth. We are endlessly curious, we dream big and we lead through vision. Our ideas change the world.

WE CREATE OPPORTUNITY

We aim to create as much opportunity for as many people as possible, and we believe startups are a powerful vehicle for doing so. By creating opportunity, we create joy for ourselves, our loved ones, our corporate partners, and if we’re doing it right -- the world.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Alloy Partners is an equal opportunity employer, and we value diversity at our company. We do not just accept diverse backgrounds, we celebrate them. Our company, the work we do, and our partners benefit from the value of a diverse team. No team member's value lies alone in their diversity, and because we value diversity so highly, we reiterate that all hiring and employment decisions are made on merit, performance, competence, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.