Lead Product Manager - Editor

About Pencil

Pencil is driving innovation in advertising technology through its state-of-the-art SaaS product, which harnesses Generative AI to redefine content creation. Our mission is to make AI the default in advertising without replacing creative people, aiming to empower small businesses and creative individuals alongside big brands.

The Role: Lead Product Manager - Editor

You will own Pencil’s core creative engine: our unified editor suite. The primary goal is to make the process of refining content from "almost there" to "perfect" fast, intuitive, and controlled.Our editors support a diverse range of output families, including Digital, Display Ads, Email, and Print. This role requires setting clear direction, building shared foundations, and driving momentum across the suite to ensure a coherent product experience that respects the nuances of each medium.While deep specialization in every editor domain is not expected, you are expected to set strategy, create clarity, and establish reusable primitives and patterns that enable the team to move quickly and deliver high-quality experiences across all formats.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead strategy and execution for Pencil’s unified editor platform across Digital, Display, Text, Email, and Print.
• Own the roadmap and sequencing, balancing shared platform foundations with output-specific depth.
• Identify high-impact improvements that remove friction and help users finish and export work confidently.
• Define core interaction patterns, shared components, and reusable frameworks that scale across editors.
• Define the product contract between AI and manual editing: predictable, controllable, reversible, and empowering.
• Drive AI-assisted workflows like resizing, relayout, and structured editing to reduce last-mile effort while preserving user control.
• Utilize product data and qualitative feedback to validate priorities and measure impact.
• Partner with Customer Success, Sales, and Marketing to understand workflow pain points and adoption barriers.
• Set the pace for the editor team by creating alignment, simplifying complexity, and unblocking decisions.
• Write clear product briefs and specs to enable fast execution without unnecessary process.
• Mentor and support junior teammates, ensuring strategic coherence and a high-quality bar.
• Ensure editors integrate cleanly with external channels, exports, and localization/translation workflows.

Your Background

• Proven experience owning a complex product area end-to-end (strategy, roadmap, delivery, iteration) with meaningful outcomes.
• Hands-on experience with editors, creation tools, builders, workflows, or AI-assisted tools (design, video, content, email) and navigating multi-format platforms.
• Comfort working within technically complex systems.
• Strong product judgment with the ability to make quick, hard tradeoffs.
• Experience shipping high-quality UX by partnering closely with Engineering and Design.
• Ability to influence without authority and keep cross-functional teams aligned.
• Enjoy mentoring and raising the team's operational bar.

You’ll thrive here if you…

• Move Fast: Comfortable making decisions with imperfect information and iterating quickly.
• Stay Human: Deep care for users and teammates, designing with empathy for real workflows.
• Act Like an Owner: Take responsibility for outcomes, spotting problems early and taking initiative.
• Keep It Simple: Fight unnecessary complexity, design reusable patterns, and make hard things intuitive.
• Love to Surprise: Find unexpected ways to delight users, especially in the last mile of polish and usability.

Key Skills/Competency

Product Management, Generative AI, SaaS, Advertising Technology, Content Creation, Editor Tools, User Experience (UX), Roadmapping, Strategy, Cross-functional Collaboration.