Technical Product Owner

Sholder← All rolesProject Contract → Retainer · On-site · Denver/Golden, COTechnical Product OwnerBuild a six-month product roadmap with an AI-native team — then keep it rolling.The short versionSholder's product roadmap is currently at zero months out. We need someone to build it from scratch — six months of prioritized, sequenced, well-reasoned product direction — working directly alongside Jarvis, our AI development system. If that goes well, we'd like you to stay on a light retainer to keep the horizon rolling.This role requires local presence in the Denver/Golden, Colorado area. Remote work is not an option — you must be able to work on-site in Golden, CO.About SholderSholder is building the infrastructure for human support — a platform that connects people with their own network of trusted advisors, coaches, and peers, powered by an AI layer that makes every relationship more intentional and every session more effective.We're a small, focused team. Our product is live. Our users are real. And our development model is unusual: the majority of our engineering is driven by an AI system named Jarvis, working within a codebase and product framework built to move fast without losing quality.How this engagement worksThis is a two-phase engagement, and we want to be upfront about that. Phase 1 is an hourly contract to build the initial 6-month product roadmap in collaboration with Jarvis. You work the hours it takes to do it well — getting deep context on where the product is, where leadership wants it to go, and what the AI development system is capable of executing. The output is a prioritized, sequenced plan the team can actually build against.Phase 2 is an optional retainer. If the project goes well and you want to stay involved, we'd like to keep you on to roll the roadmap forward — reviewing what shipped, adjusting for what we learned, and maintaining a 6-month horizon on a lightweight monthly cadence. This is roughly 10–20 hours per month, async-first.We chose this model deliberately. An hourly Phase 1 lets both sides verify alignment before committing to something longer — you're not locked into a fixed scope, and we're not locked into a fixed price. If Phase 1 delivers a roadmap we trust and a working relationship that clicks, Phase 2 is the obvious next step. If it doesn't, both sides walk away cleanly.What this role is, honestlyThis isn't a traditional TPO role. You won't be managing a team of engineers in daily standups or grooming a backlog in Jira. You'll be working as the human judgment layer in an AI-accelerated build cycle — defining what to build, reviewing what gets built, and making sure the two stay aligned.Your primary development partner is Jarvis, Sholder's AI development system. That means your job isn't to translate requirements into engineering tickets — it's to translate business and user needs into context, constraints, and acceptance criteria precise enough that an AI can act on them correctly and a human can verify it did.What you'll doPhase 1 — Roadmap Build (weeks 1–6)Get deep context on the product: current state, user signals, leadership vision, and what Jarvis is capable of buildingDefine and sequence a 6-month product roadmap — prioritized, realistic, and grounded in what will move the businessCollaborate directly with Jarvis to validate feasibility and refine the plan against real execution constraintsProduce the process artifacts that make the roadmap maintainable: intake framework, prioritization criteria, AI-agent collaboration playbookAlign leadership on the roadmap and get buy-in on the sequencing decisionsPhase 2 — Retainer (ongoing, monthly)Review what shipped each month against plan — surface drift, validate quality, update the roadmap accordinglyRoll the 6-month horizon forward: intake new signals, re-prioritize, add net-new features as the product learnsBuild and maintain feedback loops: user interviews, support signal synthesis, stakeholder reviewsRepresent the product to...