Head of Product

About the company

Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) develops and maintains the Zcash protocol and its privacy-focused self-custodial mobile wallet, Zodl.

About this role

HEAD OF PRODUCT ZODL (Zcash Open Development Lab) Location: Remote Reports to: CEO Compensation: $200-250K base + meaningful equity     MOST MONEY MOVES THROUGH SYSTEMS THAT WATCH People act differently when they're watched. That's true in a town square, and it's true in a bank statement. But we increasingly live in a world where every payment is recorded, and every balance is visible. We're building the alternative. Private, self-custodied money people can actually use. Hold your own money. Save your own money. Spend your own money. Private by default. No bank required. Our mission is to onboard billions of people to money they control.     WHAT WE BUILD ZODL is the Zcash Open Development Lab. We built the Zcash protocol, and we still support it today, along with Zallet, our full-node wallet for people who run their own infrastructure. Our code is public. Our users are not. This role isn't the protocol. This role is focused on delivering a user experience for ZEC. Zodl is our flagship wallet available on iOS and Android. It’s your everyday spending wallet. It allows you to hold ZEC and either spend it natively or let the recipient receive payment in stablecoins, Bitcoin, or any other digital currency. This is the first product, but we intend to bring a suite of products to market, including Zodl Vault for long-term savings with sophisticated capabilities and easy-to-use infrastructure. We're 27 people. We've raised over $25M. We've been building Zcash wallets and protocol since the beginning.     WHAT YOU'LL BUILD You'll own product for everything a person touches: Zodl today, and the products we haven't built yet. The Zcash protocol and Zallet sit outside this role. You'll set the product R&D agenda. You report to the CEO, and you're a peer to the Head of Engineering. Your first responsibility won't be shipping features. It'll be building the Product function that helps the organization consistently make good product decisions. This is both a leadership and an execution role. Some days you'll work with the CEO to shape long-term direction. Other days you'll refine designs, write product specifications, challenge assumptions, clarify edge cases with Engineering, or help the team navigate difficult trade-offs. We believe great product leaders stay close enough to the work to understand reality. You'll: - Turn strategy into clear execution. - Work hand-in-hand with Design to shape solutions before they're built. - Create product specifications that give Engineering the clarity to move confidently. - Connect Engineering, Design, Marketing, Support, Partnerships, and Product R&D around shared priorities. - Establish collaborative planning that keeps the organization aligned as our product portfolio grows. - Build lightweight systems that create clarity without creating bureaucracy.     HOW YOU'LL WORK You'll work across every function, bringing together strategy, customer understanding, market insight, partnership opportunities, and technical perspectives to help the organization make thoughtful decisions. Planning is collaborative. Product helps the organization decide what is worth building and why. Engineering determines how to build it, identifies opportunities to parallelize work, and owns the engineering roadmap. As you build context, judgment, and trust, we expect your role to grow with you. We don't believe ownership is fixed. We believe it follows capability. A note from the CEO I have strong opinions about what we should build. I want someone who'll make them sharper, prove me wrong when I am, and then work with engineering to get it built. While I set the overall direction, you will own how we get there, and over time you’ll take on more ownership. If you want a blank canvas with no founder in it, this isn't that. If you want a founder with taste, working with a world-class engineering team, and room to grow into more, keep reading.     HELP US SCALE WITHOUT LOSING WHAT MAKES US SPECIAL We're building more than products. We're building an organization capable of creating exceptional products for years to come. As we've grown, we've deliberately moved ownership closer to the people best equipped to carry it. The Product function is the next step in that journey. Today, our CEO leads Product Strategy while execution is shared across the organization. We're looking for someone to build the Product function that connects strategy with execution, strengthens how we plan, and helps us scale without adding unnecessary complexity. Your role isn't to have all the answers. It's to ensure the organization has the clarity to find them.     WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE Six months into the role, the organization feels different. - Planning is calmer because priorities are clearer. - Engineering spends less time waiting for product decisions. - Design starts with better-defined problems. - Customer feedback consistently informs priorities. - Strategic opportunities become deliberate investments instead of interruptions. - The organization no longer depends on individuals to connect the dots because the Product function has become that connective tissue.     YOU'LL THRIVE HERE IF YOU... - Have shipped consumer products that ordinary people actually use, at scale. - Understand crypto well enough to have opinions about it, and to know what normal people will never tolerate. - Believe people should be able to control their own money without asking permission. - Have helped scale financial products. - Have built product capabilities, not simply managed roadmaps. - Enjoy moving seamlessly between strategic thinking and day-to-day execution. - Know when a process creates leverage, and when it creates friction. - Are comfortable making decisions with imperfect information. - Naturally connect people, ideas, and disciplines. - Are humble enough to understand a system before changing it. - Roll up your sleeves wi