Technical Program Manager

About Category Labs

Category Labs (formerly known as Monad Labs) is a team of systems engineers and researchers on a mission to design and build at the frontier of decentralized technology. We strive to design and build step-function improvements over existing blockchain solutions. After raising $225M in series A funding, led by Paradigm, we are growing our team, laser-focused on delivering the first client for the Monad blockchain.

We're looking for a Technical Program Manager who will drive operational efficiency across the engineering team.

What You Will Do

• Work with engineering teams, leadership, and outside stakeholders to drive product deliverables and quality best practices.
• Collaborate with engineering leadership to understand, prioritize, and resource product deliverables. Creation, organization, and follow-up of tickets will be a large part of the role.
• Champion best practices for communication and collaboration in an engineering and research environment.
• Identify and improve existing engineering processes that could benefit from optimization or better rigor.
• Anticipate and proactively mitigate blockers (for both engineering progress and communication).
• Own end-to-end release management including versioning, patch notes, configuration documentation, and stakeholder communications to ensure safe and timely releases with zero surprises.

Who You Are

• High intelligence - ability to pick up technical concepts quickly is incredibly valuable.
• High EQ and strong communication skills - you should be able to tactfully navigate inefficiencies and maximize productivity amongst engineers.
• 3+ years of establishing and managing programs or managing projects in a successful technology company.
• 2+ years of experience in process improvement (i.e., identifying and fixing issues in processes, implementing effective communication practices that maximize line of sight).
• Stellar attention to detail and highly organized.
• Familiarity with agile practices and frameworks, particularly scrum and kanban (we use GitHub issues).
• Desire to fill critical knowledge gaps around the firm and organize / improve existing knowledge resources.
• High degree of comfort working with highly technical teams (DevOps, research, engineering). You should be able to understand the technical documentation found at https://docs.monad.xyz/.
• Interest in blockchain / web3 / crypto, with a desire for continued learning.
• Vendor management experience.
• Degree in a math, science, or engineering field is helpful.

Why Work with Us

• Challenging problems: You’ll work on extremely challenging problems with massive impact.
• Huge opportunity: The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) standard is ubiquitous, but existing EVM-compatible chains are very slow. Monad’s core innovations offer developers the best of both worlds (portability and performance) and are a game-changer for mass user adoption in crypto. Some of our recent blog posts highlight designing new mechanisms from first principles that uniquely suit Monad.
• The right team: You’ll be part of a small, exceptional team.
• Culture: We’re a lean team working together to achieve very ambitious goals. We are united in our culture of collaboration, low egos, and high-quality outputs. As an early member of our team, you’ll help to shape our culture.
• Compensation: You’ll receive a competitive salary and equity package.
• Resources and growth: We’re well-capitalized, with backing from leading venture funds like Paradigm, Electric Capital, Greenoaks, Dragonfly, and Coinbase Ventures. We keep a lean team, and this is a rare opportunity to join. You’ll learn a lot and grow as our company scales.

Salary And Benefits

Minimum full-time salary of $225,000. (This is not a guarantee of compensation or salary; a final offer amount may vary based on factors including but not limited to experience, domain expertise, and geographic location.)

Benefits for US employees include:

• World-class benefits package (medical/dental/vision)
• Unlimited paid time off
• 401(k) retirement plan + company match
• Lunch and dinner stipend (in-office NYC)
• Monthly wellness benefit
• Paid parental leave

Key skills/competency

• Program Management
• Operational Efficiency
• Agile Methodologies
• Release Management
• Stakeholder Communication
• Technical Acumen
• Process Improvement
• Problem Solving
• Vendor Management
• Blockchain Technology