ABOUT TERN

Tern is a venture-backed software company on a mission to reshape the $127B travel agency industry—by giving power back to the entrepreneurs who built it.

Nearly 98% of travel agencies are small businesses. These businesses have been chronically underserved by technology. We’re here to change that. Our platform helps travel advisors run more efficient, professional, and profitable operations—giving them the modern infrastructure they need to lead the next chapter of travel.

But the impact goes beyond business. Travel advisors help clients move more intentionally through the world. When a traveler works with an advisor, they're more likely to avoid overtouristed hotspots and more likely to spend their dollars in places where they can do real good. That’s the kind of travel we want more of.

At Tern, we believe in small business. We believe in the power of travel. And we’re building the future of both.

PRODUCT LEAD

As our second Product Lead at Tern, you’ll join a company that strives to be one of the best-operating R&D organizations in the world. We’re looking for someone who thrives on intensity, ownership, and constant growth, and is excited to dive into an early stage, fast growing startup.

A few things that make Tern a unique place to work:

• Product management is “full stack” - from user research, to product development, to QA, to launching features and communicating with users about them. We believe owning the end to end process leads to better results - you hear pain points directly from users, you work with design and engineering to fix them, and then you make sure the updates you ship actually address what you heard.

• We’re user obsessed - we live in our advisor Facebook group and feedback community and jump on multiple research calls every week. We lean into negative feedback with curiosity, and seek to rapidly fix the problems we hear. When we don’t have enough user context we feel it in our bones - and fix it immediately.

• Every squad at Tern ships features, engineering improvements, and quality-of-life updates weekly 🤯. That cadence is really intense - and incredibly rewarding. Projects have to be well scoped into shippable chunks based on the most important user needs. Testing and documentation has to happen immediately to unblock bug fixing and rollouts. Getting this right is difficult - but allows us to add value for our users and learn something new every single week.

• We’re leveling up how we work by integrating AI throughout our product development process - from research and PRD writing, to prototyping, to kicking off PRs for inbound issues ourselves. As a Product Lead, you’ll be expected to lean into these new tools and help us redefine what a next-generation product org looks like.

If you feel energized and excited about working in this way, we want to meet you.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Own a product area or squad end-to-end, shipping valuable user-facing work every single week

• Drive product discovery with an obsessive focus on our travel advisors - through user calls, async feedback loops, and using the product yourself

• Write exceptionally clear PRDs, slicing initiatives into focused, shippable parts that deliver value fast without overworking the team

• Operate as the connective tissue between users, engineering, design, and go-to-market — bringing clarity, context, and ruthless prioritization

• Use AI (and help us innovate how we use AI) across research, iteration, planning, and execution

• Ensure tight feedback loops and empower teammates to move fast with autonomy and confidence

• Constantly level up how we work: from process to quality bar to culture of ownership

• Deeply understand and track our product quality - raising the bar proactively, not reactively

• Make sure nothing falls through the cracks - we value people who hold it all in their head and notice what others miss

WHAT YOU HAVE

• Clear thinking under pressure; an ability to simplify chaos and get to the root of the problem

• Extreme ownership - you take responsibility for the outcome, not just your part of it

• Obsessive attention to detail; you’re the kind of person who notices the edge case no one else brought up

• Strong product instincts, with a feel for what great looks like (or hunger to get there)

• Excellent communication - crisp writing, contextual thinking, and ability to bring stakeholders along without over-managing

• Comfort with pace - we ship weekly and expect product to lead the prioritization and scoping that makes that sustainable

• A builder mindset - bias to action, comfort with ambiguity, and hunger to learn and improve rapidly

BONUS POINTS

• Experience in fintech or travel (especially B2B2C platforms or marketplaces)

• Strong familiarity with AI tools (especially prompting, prototyping, or workflows in product)

WHAT WE VALUE @ TERN

🌱 We’re always leveling up.

Whether you’re deepening your craft, learning from a teammate, or embracing a new challenge, growth is core to our identity.

🧭 We act with optimistic agency

We take initiative, seek clarity, and move forward, even when the path isn't obvious. Through every peak and valley, we lead with curiosity, laughter, kindness, and resolve.

💪 We have extraordinary ambition

We’re here to reshape the future of travel and we’re building for it with urgency, clarity, and conviction.

Operating Principles:

👂 We deeply understand our users.

At every level of the organization, we obsess about understanding those we serve and the industry we operate in.

➕ We embrace the power of and.

We challenge trade-offs by asking better questions. We believe creativity lives in the tension and that constraints lead to better outcomes.

📣 We speak up and move forward.

Everyone at Tern has a voice and a responsibility to use it. We invite healthy tension, share dissenting views early, and challenge each other with curiosity, not ego.

🏃‍♀️‍➡️ We move fast and sweat the details.

Velocity matters and relentless progress beats perfection every time. But speed isn’t chaos: we stay aligned, own our outcomes, and care deeply about quality.

🤣 We take the work seriously, but not ourselves.

We hire kind, driven people who elevate the room. If you’ve got a big ego or take yourself too seriously, you won’t last.

WHY JOIN TERN?

• Be part of a mission-driven team transforming the travel planning space

• Work with a supportive, curious, and creative team

• Influence and shape our user success strategy from the ground up

• Competitive salary, equity, and benefits package

Tern is committed to building a team that represents people from many different backgrounds and life experiences, reflecting our worldview coinciding with the users and customers we serve across the world. We prefer that you apply, so think of our postings as the start of the conversation. Take the chance — you may be a wonderful add to our Tern team, even if you don’t fully match every requirement on the job description.

Compensation Range: $140K - $170K