Principal Product Manager

About this role

Role summary

Lead Bank is seeking a Principal Product Manager/Product Lead to develop its Banking as a Service platform. This role involves defining product strategy, creating roadmaps, and driving execution for financial products like deposits, credit, and card transactions. The ideal candidate will have 10+ years of experience in product management/engineering within fintech, strong analytical skills, a user-first mindset, and experience with scalable SaaS platforms and compliance-centric products. This leadership role also includes managing and mentoring a team of product managers, owning resource allocation, and making hiring decisions. The position is based in San Francisco with a competitive salary and benefits package.

About Lead Bank

Lead is a banking infrastructure platform trusted by the most innovative companies to power complex financial products. We enable fintechs to offer compliant, programmable services like payments, lending, and digital assets at scale. Banking has moved beyond traditional institutions and is now embedded directly into everyday experiences, meaning companies need modern infrastructure that is safe, secure, and operationally sound.

Today, Lead is one of the only API-first, developer-focused partner banks with the financial, regulatory, and legal expertise required to help fintechs succeed. We operate offices in San Francisco, Sunnyvale, and New York City, and an FDIC-insured bank in Kansas City.

Product Team at Lead

Lead’s Product team identifies partner needs, defines strategy, and works closely with Engineering and Design to bring products to life, guiding execution from concept through launch. But building financial infrastructure isn't just about shipping features. This team is tasked with transforming the most complex banking systems and regulatory requirements into intuitive products that developers love to build with. To help fintechs launch, grow, and innovate with confidence, the Product team must be driven by a singular goal: creating elegant solutions to difficult problems. To that end, success on this team requires genuine curiosity, exceptional communication, and thoughtful collaboration.

Role Description:

We are looking for a Principal Product Manager/ Product Lead to support the development of our Banking as a Service platform. The services that you build will create the pathway for our clients to deliver innovative financial products relating to deposits, credit and lending, issuing and accepting credit card and/or debit card transactions, and more.

Our ideal product manager is highly analytical and uses “first principles thinking” when understanding a new domain. We are looking for someone with a user first mindset to build a next generation platform from the ground up.

In this role you will:

• Be passionate about changing the banking system to meet the needs of a modern digital economy
• Define product strategy and ensure alignment with broader company goals and vision
• Break down ambiguous problems, ask the right questions when gathering data across cross-functional groups, and use a structured (first principles) approach to create clarity and move forward
• Develop and maintain a prioritized product roadmap with well-defined product requirements and compelling business justifications
• Set clear goals and success metrics to measure product performance and guide decision-making
• Maintain knowledge of the technical and operational elements of your product to make informed, data-driven decisions
• Develop clear, actionable product requirements and communicate them effectively to engineering and design teams
• Collaborate closely across engineering, design, compliance, operations, and other teams to drive execution from concept to launch
• Be the glue in a diverse cross-functional environment, facilitating alignment, decisions, and consensus
• Manage and mentor a team of product managers, providing guidance, support, and feedback to help them grow
• Own resource allocation and hiring decisions to ensure the team is structured to meet product and business goals
• Gather customer insights and feedback to inform roadmap prioritization and feature design
• Begin making trade-off decisions that balance user value, technical complexity, and business impact
• Perform all other duties as assigned

Qualifications:

• 10+ years demonstrated experience in product management and/or engineering with a track record building world class fintech products
• Prior experience in enterprise software domain, scalable SaaS platform design experience, and highly compliance-centric product
• Have strong technical competence, with experience and track record of success in building high-velocity, low-latency, high-availability services with beautiful API design
• The ability to be practical and are eager to collaborate/compromise to get to the best, most efficient outcome
• Strong judgment and analytical skills
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work cross-functionally to align stakeholders on the goals and behaviors required for success
• Operate as a craftsman who will explore and execute on details to create great product experiences
• Have humility and are open to coaching

What we offer:

At Lead, we design our benefits to support company culture and principles, to foster an efficient and inspiring work environment, and to create the conditions for our team to give their best in both work and life:

• Competitive compensation, including opportunities for equity grants based on experience, geographic location, and role
• Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, 401k Matching, and other wellness benefits, including FSA, HSA and HRA
• Paid parental leave
• Flexible vacation policy, including PTO and paid holidays
• A fun and challenging team environment in a dynamic industry with ample opportunities for career growth

\*Lead Bank is proud to have an inclusive culture committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity in all employment decisions regardless of race, color, gender, national origin, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, military status, veteran status or any other legally protected status.

\*Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

\*Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

\*Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

\*Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. Pay is based on a number of factors and may vary depending on geographical market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. These ranges may be modified in the future.

Zone 1: $250,000 - $275,000 (SF/Bay Area, NYC, Seattle)

Zone 2: $220,000 - $250,640 (Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, Denver, Boston, Washington DC, San Diego, Philadelphia, Portland, Sacramento, Miami)

Zone 3: $200,000 - $240,233 (Other US Metros)

Ready to apply?

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