Product Manager (San Francisco)

Our mission at Ello is simple and urgent: maximize the potential of every child, everywhere. We're building the world's first AI teacher to close that gap: one that listens, speaks, adapts, and inspires, just like the best human educators.

Our first product, Read with Ello, is already helping tens of thousands of kids each week learn to read. It listens as they read aloud, offers support when they stumble, and generates magical, personalized stories. It works, and kids love it.

Now, we're scaling that success into something even bigger: a complete AI teacher that can help children learn far beyond reading. Our new app combines language, speech, and memory to deliver interactive learning for kids worldwide; check it out here. We're moving fast: we ship weekly, test directly with kids, and push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI in education.

With the resources of the world's top investors and the heart of a public benefit corporation, we're here to revolutionize how children learn globally. Featured on TIME's Best Inventions and Fortune's Change the World, Ello is a small, mission-driven team taking on one of the most important challenges of our time: to democratize education.

About the Role

We’re hiring a Product Manager in San Francisco who can work at the intersection of technical engineering and exceptional design. You’ll own some of our hardest product problems, partnering closely with engineers and designers to turn frontier AI capabilities into experiences that feel simple, intuitive, and even magical for children.

The best PMs for this role think like engineers, care like designers, and obsess over the child using the product. They’re equally comfortable debating system architecture, refining interaction details, and making difficult product tradeoffs that turn complex technology into deceptively simple experiences. As we scale, we need more capacity, more clarity, and more taste – this person brings all three. You'll partner closely with our engineers on the hardest and most exciting parts of the product, turn fuzzy possibilities into a concrete plan, and ship experiences that feel deceptively simple on the surface while solving incredibly complex problems underneath.

One month you might be inventing a new way for children to learn math with an AI teacher. The next, you might be redesigning how the AI teacher responds when a child gets stuck. In every case, your job is to bridge what’s technically possible with what feels effortless for a child.

You'll work across product, design, engineering, research, and leadership in San Francisco and Nairobi. You'll own meaningful parts of the product experience, from identifying user needs and product hypotheses, to testing with children and families, to shipping improvements that make the product better and more joyful to use.

We care more about the quality of your experience than the exact number of years on your resume. We're looking for someone who clearly learns fast and has the drive to grow into whatever the role demands. The best PMs at Ello are equal parts product strategist, systems thinker, designer, and child advocate – if that sounds like you, you could be a great fit.

Exciting Things About This Role

• You'll own mission-critical product areas end-to-end and directly shape how children experience learning.
• You'll partner directly with world-class ML engineers on some of the most interesting frontier product work in AI and education.
• You’ll shape not just what we build, but how it feels – sweating the details that make the difference between a feature children use and one they genuinely love.
• You'll work on one of the most important applications of AI: helping children learn.
• You'll ship weekly and test directly with the children and families you're building for.
• You'll help a fast-scaling product org move with more momentum and more order.
• You'll collaborate with world-class engineers, designers, and researchers across continents – and if you're excited about spending meaningful time in our Nairobi office, even better. We'd love for this role to help strengthen the bridge between our two hubs.

Key Requirements

• 3–5+ years of experience in product management or closely adjacent roles (engineering, design, or UX research). AI-forward candidates coming from engineering with fewer years of formal PM work are welcome; quality of experience matters more than years.
• Track record of shipping high-quality products from concept to launch, including large or complex efforts you carried through ambiguity.
• Hands-on experience using AI-native prototyping tools (e.g., Claude, Bolt, Replit, etc.) to build quick demos, test product ideas, and accelerate workflows.
• Strong design sense: able to recognize great UX and collaborate closely with designers to create simple, delightful experiences.
• Technical fluency: comfortable getting into system tradeoffs, partnering closely with ML and engineering teams, and making sound decisions on technically complex work.
• Ability to bring structure to ambiguous, fast-moving projects: aligning stakeholders, sequencing the work, and keeping momentum without adding process for its own sake.
• Deep curiosity about users: comfortable talking to users, observing behavior, identifying patterns, and turning insight into product direction.
• Structured thinker: naturally able to break ambiguous problems into clear decisions and thoughtful tradeoffs.
• Creates clarity: communicates decisions, tradeoffs, and context in a way that brings teams together and accelerates execution.
• Demonstrated ownership mindset: proactive, accountable, and outcome-driven.

Nice to Have

• Software engineering experience or equivalent experience building highly technical products.
• Experience working closely with ML or AI teams on production features.
• Experience with data analytics tools (A/B testing tools, visualization tools, basic ability to write queries).
• Past experience working on consumer products for kids/families or the education market.
• Familiarity with game design mechanics, engagement loops, and motivation frameworks.
• Experience conducting UX research or play testing with real users, and using those insights to drive product decisions.
• Comfortable mocking up ideas directly in Figma

We Look for Candidates Who

• Want to build products that create impact with delight.
• Move with urgency because opportunities like this don’t come around often.
• Default to ownership instead of waiting for permission.
• Obsess over craft –from interaction details to product strategy—because children deserve exceptional experiences.Experiment constantly, especially with AI, because yesterday’s workflows won’t build tomorrow’s products.
• Have a strong, opinionated sense of what good design looks and feels like
• Are excited to build engaging and educational experiences for children worldwide.
• Build meaningful relationships and communicate with honesty, empathy, and respect.

About Ello

Ello is a public benefit corporation on a mission to maximize the potential of all children. We're currently around 45 people, headquartered in San Francisco with a second office in Nairobi, Kenya.

Our team has deep expertise in artificial intelligence, K-12 education, and child development across institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Google, Apple, and more. We were part of Y Combinator's W20 batch and are funded by world-class investors including Goodwater Capital, Homebrew, Reed Hastings, Common Sense Growth, Ravensburger, Project A Ventures, Reach Capital, Khosla Ventures, WndrCo, Visible Ventures, and K9 Ventures.

We're a small, collaborative team that takes each other's voices very seriously. Because our mission is to support all children, it is critical that our team is representative of the communities we work in; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture. If you have questions about immigration, reach out to us at recruiting@ello.com.

We feel enormously privileged to be building at this moment. Advances in AI have made it possible, for the first time, to imagine giving every child a truly personalized teacher. We don’t take that opportunity for granted.

We work with urgency because millions of children can’t wait. We care deeply about craftsmanship because learning experiences should feel magical. And we believe it’s possible to build ambitious technology while building a company where people do the best work of their careers.

If that excites you, we’d love to meet you.

At Ello, diversity is a moral imperative and a competitive advantage. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, skin color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We plan and structure our interviews to assess skills and experience directly. If you need accommodations throughout the interview process, please contact recruiting@ello.com.