Principal Product Manager
About Fellow ----------------
At Fellow, we’re on a mission to help people brew ridiculously good coffee at home. But we’re more than just beautifully designed kettles and grinders—we’re a brand built on innovation, community, and culture. We believe great coffee isn’t just about the final cup; it’s about the experience, the ritual, and the people who make it all happen.
We’re looking for a Principal Product Manager to focus on and own our brewing category through future accessories and platform extensions. You’ll act as the “mini-CEO” of the category, owning the product vision, roadmap, and commercial outcomes across DTC, retail, and global markets.
This role is based in our San Francisco, CA office and requires regular in-office presence in accordance with company policy.
Who You Are ---------------
You thrive in highly cross-functional environments, operating at the intersection of coffee excellence, engineering, design, and business. You have translated customer insights and market trends into a clear product strategy, and you’re comfortable making courageous tradeoffs between cost, features, and timelines. You excel at driving alignment from early concept through launch and post-launch optimization.
As a senior individual contributor, you’re confident in influencing decisions at the highest levels of the organization. You’re comfortable presenting to executives and board members, and you have collaborated with leaders across Product Engineering, R&D, Marketing, and Commercial teams.
What You’ll Do ------------------
- Product Vision & Strategy - Brewing
- Own the end-to-end product vision and long-term roadmap for Fellow’s brewing platform (machines, accessories, and ecosystem features).
- Define what “Fellow-level brewing” means across performance, reliability, experience, and aesthetics—and translate that into clear product requirements.
- Build and maintain a deep understanding of the brewing landscape (home and prosumer), competitive set, and emerging technologies.
- Customer & Market Insight
- Drive qualitative and quantitative research with home baristas, prosumers, cafes, and partners to uncover needs, pain points, and opportunities.
- Synthesize insights into clear problem statements and prioritized opportunities, balancing enthusiast feature asks with broad-market needs and price sensitivity.
- Roadmap, Requirements & Tradeoffs
- Own PRDs and requirements from early concept through launch, working closely with R&D and Product Engineering.
- Make explicit tradeoffs between cost, complexity, performance, and schedule; be the final decision-maker on feature set vs. price point for your product line.
- Partner with Finance and Commercial teams to build and pressure test business cases, including forecast, margin, and portfolio positioning.
- Cross-Functional Leadership (IC, not people manager)
- Lead cross-functional pods across R&D, Product Engineering, Firmware/Software, UX, Industrial Design, Operations, Marketing, CX, and Sales to deliver on roadmap goals.
- Build tight partnerships with R&D on early concept development and coffee performance, with Product Engineering on execution, validation, and reliability, and with Software PM & UX on connected experiences.
- Drive clarity, documentation, and decision-making so teams move quickly and stay aligned.
- Go-to-Market & Lifecycle Ownership
- Own key elements of go-to-market strategy in partnership with Marketing, Sales, and CX (positioning, messaging, pricing, launch sequencing).
- Define success metrics (adoption, NPS, margin, attach rates, field quality) and run post-launch reviews.
- Steward the full lifecycle of the brewing portfolio, including derivative SKUs, line extensions, and end-of-life decisions.
- Platform & Portfolio Thinking
- Ensure brewing roadmap fits within Fellow’s broader ecosystem strategy (grinders, brewers, kettles, analog, software).
- Look for platform and component re-use opportunities to reduce complexity and cost without compromising experience.
Qualifications ------------------
- 8–10+ years of Product Management experience, including significant time as a senior IC working on complex, cross-functional products.
- Proven track record of shipping successful consumer hardware products; experience in coffee, kitchen appliances, or prosumer devices is a strong plus.
- Demonstrated ability to own a product line P&L-level view (pricing, margin, mix) and make tradeoffs between features, cost, and schedule.
- Strong technical fluency working with hardware, firmware, and software teams.
- Experience working closely with brand and marketing teams on positioning, messaging, and go-to-market strategy for premium consumer products.
- Exceptional communication skills—able to create crisp narratives for executive and board-level audiences.
- Deep customer empathy and passion for elevating everyday rituals—ideally, you’re a coffee enthusiast who cares about brewing quality and experience.
- Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, high-growth environment with evolving structure and processes.
Why You’ll Love This Role -----------------------------
- A creative, fast-moving environment where ideas turn into action.
- Competitive compensation including employee equity plan
- Generous paid time off plan
- 401k with company contribution after 6 months of employment
- Medical/dental/vision insurance
- Better Yourself Wellness credit & Better Your Community donation matching
- Monthly Fitness Stipend
- Summer Fridays
- Paid Parental Leave
- Generous discount on Fellow products
- Best coffee anywhere
The salary range for this position is $190,000 - $210,000 plus bonus & equity. We intentionally publish salary ranges to promote transparency and set clear expectations. Final compensation is determined based on a number of factors, including relevant experience, skills, expertise, scope of previous work, demonstrated impact, and internal equity. As a result, not every candidate will be hired at the top of the range.
Our highest goal at Fellow is creating a safe, inclusive, and rewarding environment where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and thrive. We are committed to building diverse teams and strongly encourage people from underrepresented groups, including but not limited to women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, foreign-born residents, and veterans to apply.
Fellow is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will not be discriminated against because of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, religion, national origin, citizenship status, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition or any protected category prohibited by local, state or federal laws.
About Fellow
Fellow specializes in product design and brings ideas from sketchbook to a kitchen table.