Product Operations Lead

Smartcat is building the future of work, where human expertise meets digital teammates to drive 10x to 1000x productivity gains for the world’s leading enterprises.

We’re on the frontier of an entirely new category: Agentic AI. We enable enterprises to build high-performing hybrid workforces made up of both humans and AI agents. These AI agents aren’t generic copilots. They’re fully trained digital teammates that learn from your best people, your content, and your business strategy—ready to get to work from day one.

Our platform combines generative AI, human-in-the-loop workflows, and a living Enterprise Skill Graph that continuously learns and improves. Whether you're launching a product globally, onboarding new hires, translating learning content, or aligning legal teams across regions, Smartcat turns knowledge into action and action into scale.

Over 1,000 companies, including 20% of the Fortune 500, rely on Smartcat to bring their business to the world—instantly, accurately, and in every language. As a Series C company with consistently high year-over-year growth, we’re scaling fast and investing in people who want to shape the future of work with us.

Join us in unlocking global potential, one human and agent team at a time.

About the Role

We’re looking for a Product Operations Manager who brings order, clarity, and speed to how product gets built, released, and adopted.
This role sits at the center of Product, Engineering, Design, and GTM. You will not define the product strategy, but you will make sure the strategy actually turns into execution, high-quality releases, and measurable outcomes.
If the team feels like “a lot is happening but nothing is landing,” this role fixes that.

What You’ll Do

You will own the operating system behind product execution and releases.

1. Drive Product Execution Clarity

• Translate company and product strategy into clear, actionable plans
• Ensure OKRs connect directly to roadmap and weekly execution
• Identify gaps between goals and actual delivery, and close them

2. Build and Run Product Operating Cadence

• Establish and run planning cycles (weekly, monthly, quarterly)
• Standardize how teams plan, prioritize, and track work
• Ensure consistent use of tools like Jira, dashboards, and reporting

3. Own Product Release Management

• Define and run the end-to-end release process across all teams
• Ensure every release is scoped, ready, and aligned across Product, Engineering, Design, and GTM
• Drive release readiness reviews (quality, dependencies, documentation, enablement)
• Coordinate launch plans including internal enablement, documentation, and external communication
• Prevent “silent releases” by ensuring every release has clear intent, messaging, and success criteria

4. Ensure Release Quality and Adoption

• Track release performance post-launch (usage, adoption, impact on KPIs)
• Identify gaps between shipped features and actual customer value
• Close the loop between Product, Support, and GTM on release feedback
• Drive improvements in release quality, reducing rework and customer-facing issues

5. Own Visibility and Accountability

• Create clear, real-time visibility into progress, releases, risks, and blockers
• Drive regular business and release reviews with leadership
• Hold teams accountable to commitments without becoming bureaucratic

6. Improve Product Development Processes

• Identify inefficiencies across discovery, delivery, and release
• Simplify workflows, reduce noise, and remove friction
• Ensure teams focus on outcomes, not just output

7. Manage Cross-Functional Alignment

• Align Product, Engineering, Design, and GTM on priorities and releases
• Ensure dependencies are visible and managed proactively
• Eliminate miscommunication and last-minute surprises around launches

8. Enable Better Decision Making

• Bring data, metrics, and insights into product and release discussions
• Support prioritization with clear context, not frameworks for the sake of it
• Ensure teams understand trade-offs and make decisions quickly

What Good Looks Like in This Role

• Releases are predictable, well-coordinated, and high quality
• No last-minute chaos before launch
• Every release has clear goals, messaging, and measurable impact
• Teams know exactly what is shipping, when, and why
• Leadership has visibility into both execution and release outcomes
• Adoption and customer impact improve, not just output

What We’re Looking For

Experience

• 5+ years in Product Operations, Product Management, or similar roles
• Experience managing product releases in SaaS or platform companies
• Proven track record of improving product team effectiveness and release quality

Skills

• Strong operational thinking and structured problem solving
• Deep understanding of product development lifecycle, including release management
• Ability to connect strategy to execution and launch
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management
• Comfortable working with data, metrics, and dashboards

Mindset

• You care about outcomes, not just shipping features
• You push for clarity, readiness, and quality before release
• You are comfortable challenging teams when something is not ready to ship
• You move fast and fix issues instead of letting broken releases go out

Nice to Have

• Experience scaling product organizations
• Familiarity with tools like Jira/Youtrack, Product Discovery tools, Notion
• Experience working on platform or AI-driven products

Why This Role Matters

This is a force-multiplier role.
You won’t just support the product team, you will ensure that what gets built actually reaches customers in a way that drives adoption and impact. This role directly determines whether your product ships chaos or ships value.

If you want, I can push this one step further and define a release framework (what “ready to ship” actually means) so this role doesn’t become a coordinator but a gatekeeper of quality.

• A global, connected team
  We’re a team of 200+ people across 30+ countries, working together through a hub-and-spoke model anchored in eight key locations: New York, London, Lisbon, Costa Rica, Serbia, Armenia, Georgia, and Spain. Most of our roles are remote-friendly, giving you the flexibility to do your best work from where you thrive. For customer-facing teams, we prioritize proximity to our customers, ensuring we stay deeply connected to their needs and deliver an exceptional experience. No matter where you’re based, you’ll be part of a highly collaborative, globally-distributed team that values ownership, speed, and meaningful impact.
• Be part of an AI Native Organization
  We are highly innovative, using AI across all areas of the organization to accelerate decision-making and free people to focus on strategy and high-impact work. We embrace new ideas and encourage all Smartcaters, regardless of level or department, to manage their own AI Agents. At Smartcat you’ll shape how AI transforms the workplace and play an integral role in ensuring Smartcat remains a leader in AI innovation.
• Innovating a $100 Billion industry
  Smartcat is reshaping the $100B multilingual content industry with an AI-powered platform that makes it easy for companies to create, translate, and localize global content at scale. Our platform enables enterprise teams to move away from slow, traditional outsourcing methods, and achieve fast, high-quality results, at a fraction of the cost.
• Join the rocketship to scale-up 10x and beyond together
  We are looking for someone to become an integral part of our team and play a crucial role in the most exciting part of our journey: transitioning from a post-Series C startup to a company exceeding $100M in ARR and $1B in valuation. Our journey isn’t for the faint of heart. We are growing at 130% YoY, thanks to our strong product-market fit and high-performing team, and plan to accelerate from here.
• Smartcat Culture Code: Where Diversity Meets High Performance
  At Smartcat, we are committed to building a culture that highlights respect and appreciation for each individual's unique background and perspective, while maintaining a strong focus on results and engagement. We believe in welcoming everyone and fostering an inclusive environment where team members can be their authentic selves at work. Our commitment to inclusion is steadfast, and we stand firmly against discrimination and harassment.