Founding Product Leader (Product Anchor)

Company: Clara AI

Website: www.justclara.ai

Location: Bangalore / Pune (On-site preferred, Bangalore ideal)

Type: Full-time

About Clara:

Clara is building an AI-native System of Action for commercial trades - HVAC, plumbing, fire safety, and similar field-service industries.

Most companies in this space run on fragmented legacy CRMs and manual workflows.

Clara sits on top of those systems and actually runs operations:

- Answering calls

- Scheduling jobs

- Dispatching technicians

- Collecting payments

- Managing operational workflows

- All powered by AI-driven agents and automation.

The product is already live with:

- 200+ paying customers

- Strong retention

- Growing revenue (~$1M ARR)

- lara has clear product-market fit and is entering the scale phase with strong GTM momentum.

Why This Role Exists:

- Clara has market pull and revenue.

- The current constraint is execution clarity and stability under GTM pressure.

Today:

- Product prioritization is largely founder-driven

- Inputs come from customers, GTM, and engineering

- Tradeoffs need to happen faster and more systematically

- This role exists to introduce a single execution anchor who:

- Owns product outcomes

- Kills ambiguity

- Creates a repeatable product execution cadence

- This is not a traditional scoped PM role.

- This is a founding-level operator responsible for bringing structure, speed, and judgment to product execution.

The Role:

- You will act as the Product Anchor.

- You will work directly with the Founder & CEO and own end-to-end product execution:

- Customer reality - Product decisions - Engineering execution - Shipped outcomes.

- Your job is to make the product system decisive, stable, and fast.

Key Responsibilities:

Product Execution:

- Own product execution end-to-end: problem - priority - delivery - outcomes

- Convert conflicting inputs into a clear priority stack

- Define what will be built, what will not be built, and why

- Ensure shipped features actually solve real customer problems

Execution Cadence:

- Establish and run weekly product execution rhythms

- Maintain a clear roadmap with short feedback loops

- Create structured prioritization frameworks

- Track and measure outcomes post-launch

Product Engineering Alignment:

- Act as the connective layer between Product, Engineering, and GTM

- Reduce engineering thrash and context switching

- Ensure engineering time goes to highest impact work

Decision Making:

- Make fast product tradeoffs using judgment, data, and customer insight

- Balance speed, reliability, and scalability

Product Culture:

- Raise the bar on ownership, clarity, and accountability

- Build a culture of shipping, learning, and iterating

AI & Technology:

- Clara is an AI-native product.

- You must be comfortable operating in agent-driven systems and AI-heavy product environments.

Required familiarity (hands-on or ownership level):

- LLM-driven workflows and agentic systems

- RAG pipelines, evaluation loops, and iteration cycles

- Agent frameworks (LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, or equivalents)

- Vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, or equivalents)

- PostgreSQL / MySQL and data-heavy backends

- AWS or GCP (cost, performance, reliability tradeoffs)

- Products coordinating real-world operational workflows

- You do not need to be a full-time engineer, but you must be technically credible with engineering teams.

What we are looking for:

We are looking for a senior product leader with technical depth who has operated in early-stage SaaS environments that successfully scaled.

Core Experience:

- 5-10 years of product leadership experience

- Experience working in cross-border SaaS companies

Has seen companies scale roughly through stages like:

- $200K - $5M - $10M ARR

- Has operated in high-ambiguity startup environments

- Experience building or owning 0- 1 or 1- 10 product phases

Execution Capability:

The ideal candidate has demonstrated ability to:

- Run structured product and engineering execution

- Translate customer signals into clear product priorities

- Build product systems that scale with GTM growth

- Balance speed vs stability in fast-growing products

Customer & GTM Exposure:

- Strong candidates will have experience:

- Working closely with customers

- Partnering deeply with sales and GTM teams

- Building products where customer feedback directly shapes roadmap

Technical Depth:

Comfortable working with:

- Engineering teams on AI-driven or data-heavy systems

- Architecture tradeoffs and technical constraints

- Agent workflows, data pipelines, and scalable backend systems

- Background Signals (Helpful but Not Mandatory)

Candidates may come from backgrounds such as:

- Ex-founder experience

- Founding PM or early product leader

- Early engineer who transitioned into product leadership

- Experience in AI-native or workflow automation products is a strong plus.

Location Preference:

- Preferred location: Residing in or open to relocating to Bangalore (strong preference)

- Candidates in Pune may also be considered if willing to work closely with leadership.

Who This Role Is For:

This role is best suited for someone comfortable with:

- Ambiguity and evolving product definitions

- Making decisions without perfect data

- Operating without rigid PM processes

- High ownership and accountability

You will thrive here if you:

- Naturally take ownership and say "I'll figure it out."

- Prefer building systems rather than managing tickets

- Care deeply about shipping real outcomes

Compensation & Benefits:

- Competitive salary

- Meaningful ESOPs

- Medical insurance and standard benefits

- High ownership, influence, and long-term upside

Academic Background:

Strong academic backgrounds (IITs, IIMs, or equivalent) are appreciated but not mandatory.

What matters far more:

- Ownership

- Execution velocity

- Real experience shipping meaningful outcomes in ambiguous environments.