Product Manager

About Keeper

Taxes made magical

Tech description:

Job description:

You will be our second product manager, and you’ll own a critical surface area: all of tax filing. The traditional tax filing software industry hasn’t been disrupted in 35 years. Come help us bring true intelligence, ease-of-use, and personalization to tax filing.

- **You’ll help us reimagine tax filing software.** Traditional tax filing software is just glorified form-filling — but it doesn’t have to be that way. You’ll help us marry the intelligence and personalization of having a personal CPA with the ease-of-use and convenience of software.
- **Work with tax experts to translate even the smallest details into user value.** Taxes are really complicated, but every one of those complications is an opportunity to delight our users (at scale!). Smarter audit protection, auto-filing [form 843](https://www.jacksonhewitt.com/tax-help/tax-tips-topics/penalties/dos-and-donts-when-requesting-irs-penalty-abatement-for-failure-to-file-or-pay-penalties/) for late filing penalty abatement, [trader tax status benefits](https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/06/07/how-to-become-eligible-for-trader-tax-status-benefits/?sh=5f8a89063e35), etc - it’s every product-person’s dream.
- **A talented, motivated cross-functional team at your fingertips.** Dedicated engineering squads, component designer, illustrator, operations managers, data scientists, and content marketers - all here to support you.

**Want to play around with our current tax filing flow?** [Click here](https://dashboard.keepertax.com/onboarding/income-type), create an account and then click [here](https://dashboard.keepertax.com/tax-filing/navigation).

## **Qualifications**

- **You’ve managed complex products before.** 3+ years experience with end-to-end product development as a PM at a consumer software company. Ideally you’ve also managed complex flow-based products such as insurance or loans.
- **Strong user-empathy.** You can talk to users, elicit their honest feedback, and synthesize your learnings into actionable insights for the team. You strive to understand everything about the customer’s life. You’ve moved beyond the formality of “user research”. For you, it’s just “talking to customers”. If you don’t have incredible customer intuition & empathy, you'll have a hard time wielding any influence in our org.
- **Strong analytics training.** Nothing gets shipped in a vacuum - whenever a new feature is released you’ll be bringing a post-release analytics summary back to your team. You’ll need the ability to combine data with product intuition to systematically identify the most important goals and the best ways for the team to address them.

## **Keeper's Mission**

The complexities of the US tax system are mind boggling. Riddled with credits and tax breaks at the state and federal levels, it’s no wonder why the U.S. has [**3x accountants per capita](https://www.accountancydaily.co/accountancy-profession-accountants-galore)** vs other developed nations. Even for middle class American households, getting a fair tax outcome requires an expensive accountant. Software is [**eating the world**](https://a16z.com/why-software-is-eating-the-world/) in every industry, yet over half of American households still file taxes through human services.

Nowhere is this paradox more clear than for people with independent contracting and freelancing income, and so we’re starting there. Every year, around [**40 million**](https://www.gigeconomydata.org/basics/how-many-gig-workers-are-there) American households overpay on their taxes by an average of **[$1,249.](http://www.keepertax.com/research/gig-workers-overpay-on-taxes-by-21-percent)** We call this phenomenon **[The Freelance Tax Tragedy](https://www.keepertax.com/research/the-freelance-tax-tragedy).**

## **Our Team**

- **We’re warm**. We believe that a critical part of enjoying is enjoying your co-workers. No, we’re not a “family”, but do we care deeply about fostering an **[environment of psychological safety](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html)**. From generous compensation policies, to servant leadership, to engaging off-sites twice a year — we know that the people who choose to work with us have lots of options.
- **We’re engaged**. We are a passionate group that places high value on autonomy, transparency, ownership, and motivation. We spend a lot of time making sure that everyone has the tools and skills needed to complete their work in a fast and satisfying manner, because it leads to great results and is just a good way to live.
- **We’re customer-centric.** Everyone on the team regularly conducts user calls, and many of us are former freelancers ourselves! This leads us to a shared understanding of user wants and needs that allows us to quickly design and implement changes to the product.

## **Keeper's Product**

We’re redesigned tax filing software from the ground up around personalization, intelligence, and impeccable user experience. We think that people shouldn’t have to choose between the personalization and comfort of human services, and the convenience and accessibility of software. Check it out for yourself [**on desktop**](https://www.notion.so/8d4a91b33073450e9c96db99ad527b8f?pvs=21) or **[mobile](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/keeper-taxes-made-magical/id1471090941)**.

## **Keeper's Tech**

Our audacious vision is only possible thanks to the technological Kairos we’re living in. Transformer models are changing everything, and Keeper is at the bleeding edge of what this means for consumer products:

- Our **[automatic write-off identification technology](https://www.keepertax.com/research/automatic-write-off-detection)** allows people to simply connect a financial account, wait 45 seconds, and watch as hundreds of dollars get added to their tax refunds.
- Our [**tax document data extraction**](https://www.keepertax.com/research/fine-tuning-a-transformer-model-for-document-data-extraction) systems make it possible for users to simply drop off whatever documents they have in bulk and Keeper takes care of it — akin to an accountant.
- Our [**LLM-based live tax assistance**](https://www.keepertax.com/research/lessons-learned-from-supercharging-live-tax-assistance-with-llms) unlocks real-time Q&A at a level of accuracy that surpasses 80% of licensed tax professionals in blind testing.

Together, these technologies enable Keeper be the first tax software that can actually do your taxes for you. We’ve long believed that this is the future of tax software, and so have a 2 year head start

## **Business Metrics**

- Keeper has ~40,000 paying subscribers (they pay $192 / year)
- 15K reviews on the [App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/keeper-taxes-made-magical/id1471090941) and [Play Store](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keepertax&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1) (average: 4.8 stars)
- 23 full-time employees
- The business is cash-flow positive
- We’ve [raised](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/keeper-tax) $15M (Series A)

## **Product at Keeper**

Keeper is a product company. We’ve known from the very beginning that winning in the individual tax prep space is all about incredible user experience and product strategy. As such, the product role is very central and influential in the organization. You will very much be guiding what others should work on — and with that power comes responsibility.

Here are some things we’re opinionated about when it comes to the product management role:

- **A unique set of responsibilities** Our PMs own UX design and analytics, which is somewhat unique. On the other hand, our PMs do not “project manage” the engineers to the same degree that is common at legacy orgs. You can [learn more about our roles & responsibilities mapping here](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nKX1bnaBRAb2kuLroZMyqKyIb9_NW_zk7g6ZIXBOiBA/edit#slide=id.g1eed61c496b_0_0).

- **Crisp, clear documentation** Great docs are the antidote to back-to-back meetings. We try very hard to keep our communications as efficient as possible by doing live meetings only after the context has been shared and pre-read asynchronously. You can [read more / see examples of our doc templates here](https://www.templatesbypaul.com/).

- **A servant leader mentality** You will have enormous responsibility and influence as a PM at Keeper. The rest of the team is *giving* you that authority because they trust and respect you. It’s a delicate balance and requires a low-ego mentality while still driving clear, opinionated, decisions.