Tl;dr

You’ll be Head of Product in a startup working on solving climate change. Looking for an experienced person with the ability to lead a team in shipping high quality software products to customers. Nori is a two-sided marketplace with various external stakeholders, and two customer types: demand-side and supply-side customers. You’ll be leading the team in building a platform that helps these customers to easily and verifiably buy and sell digital certificates of carbon removal.

Summary of Nori

Nori is a startup founded in October 2017 with the mission to enable global engagement to reverse climate change via carbon removal. By providing a marketplace where anyone in the world can pay for and get paid for removing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide, Nori acts as a financial mechanism that will create new opportunities for climate innovation and carbon removal. 

We’re upgrading on the carbon offset space. Historically carbon offsets have been mired with opacity which then leads to a lack of confidence and trust in what projects are supported. Additionally, most carbon offsets (95%) represent paying someone to do less of a bad thing, i.e. mitigating emissions.

Nori is different in three key ways. First, Nori only supports carbon removal, or carbon sequestration, which is the only method that can actually reverse/negate carbon emissions. Second, Nori is the only platform with end-to-end marketplace of credits. Because we work directly with project owners who “supply carbon removal”, maintain the retirement of carbon removal credits, and track this all on the blockchain, Nori is providing a transparent and credible way to pay for carbon removal directly from project developers with no price markups. Lastly, with Nori’s API, businesses can offer environmental action and engagement directly to their customers at check-out or in-app, and immediately provide information on the project they supported, with immediate create of certificates with the customers name on it. 

 We highly recommend that you review the information about Nori and its team before applying to this position at https://nori.com/careers.

Knowing us better will save you time, allowing you to assess whether or not we are a good fit for each other, and will also give you better context for completing the job application below. 

Who You’ll Work With

You’ll be leading the Product team at Nori. However, you will work closely with the supply and methodology teams, which are led by our program manager, as well as work with the head of sales & customer development. You will also communicate often with executive leadership to determine the strategy and priorities of the Product team over the short and long term. 

Each of these teams work a little bit differently, but they work hand in hand with each other to create an inventory of verified carbon removals that can be sold through our marketplace. 

The Product Team 

The Product Team is responsible for the Nori marketplace, supply-side enrollment app, marketing website, and any of the technical/software aspects of Nori’s work. We are hiring additional roles for this team with a target of having four engineers and a UX designer. The Product team works with the other teams—Supply, Sales, and Communications—to support business development needs. 

The Supply & Methodology Teams

The Supply team works with Nori Suppliers: anyone who can verifiably remove and store CO2 from the atmosphere. The Methodology team works on developing the requirements for how projects are enrolled (see current methodology). Both teams report to the Supply Program Manager. As Nori’s current focus is on our Croplands Methodology, the Supply team is working with farmers as well as the partners and companies around them to enroll croplands into the Nori market. 

Five key aspects of the role...

• Focus on the goal. We need a Head of Product who won’t tell our engineers what to do, but rather explain to them why the features on the roadmap are right for our specific customers (supplier and demand customers) and business. You will be responsible for synthesizing requirements from stakeholders on all of our internal teams (such as program manager for supply and head of sales) into product features and developing a roadmap for product development to meet the company goals (set monthly in OKR format). You will also be expected to work with your team and any appropriate stakeholders on how to define and track progress for the Product team.
• Limit work in progress of the Product team. While you will be responsible for prioritizing feature roadmaps, you will also be responsible for keeping the Product team focused on its current goals. There is a long list of good ideas and nice-to-haves, and even must-haves, but it is your responsibility to make sure that the team is limiting its work in progress and meeting the currently monthly goals. You will be responsible for communicating this progress to the leadership team (which you will be a part of) in weekly meetings and suggesting any additional strategies that should be implemented.
• Leverage technical expertise and capabilities. You should be the type of experienced Head of Product who knows what it takes to build complex software. This could mean that you’re able to work with the engineers on estimating time to complete tasks, or can push back when an engineering proposal doesn’t fit for timing or other reasons. It’s your responsibility to know what the Product team is capable of and balance that with what our customers and users need.  
• Be open and seek cross-functional collaboration. While you will be a member of the Product team and working primarily within that framework, you will be expected to work with other internal teams.  We are looking for someone who listens carefully and listens carefully to internal stakeholders, always looking to capture meaningful insights and suggestions. Nori is a two-sided marketplace with many stakeholders: external partners for carbon quantification (COMET-Farm), third party verifiers, farmers who supply data and carbon removal services to Nori’s marketplace, and buyers of the digital carbon removal certificates. Because we are building a platform to meet the needs of these different stakeholders, you will be expected to work with and foster alignment across the various teams in Nori that work with these external stakeholders. 
• Pursue customer centered development to meet company goals.  You should be able to represent the customer perspective in all aspects of work including company meetings. You will work with the Nori Sales & Customer Development team to identify demand-side customer groups and align on the motivations and expectations of these customer groups. You will also work with the Supply and Methodology program manager to align on motivations and expectations for supply-side customers. 

You'll be responsible for...

• Working with both internal and external stakeholders to make decisions about what gets built next. Planning out a flexible roadmap that meets both Nori’s strategic goals, as well as continuously improving our users’ experiences. In particular, you will be partnering with the Supply Program Manager, Head of Sales and the CEO to plan out the overall roadmap and goals for the Product team.
• Building upon the existing project management process for the Product team
• Clearing obstacles for the Product team
• Act as liaison to our external partners who are helping bring in Supply and informing overall product requirements
• Limiting work in progress and keeping the Product team moving forward on current goals

Must-haves 

• 5+ years experience acting as a product owner that has resulted in software shipped to production
• Experience with Agile environment

Nice-to-haves

• Deep experience with two-sided marketplaces
• Experience with Agile software development

Key outcomes and metrics

• Team and company progress is measured in monthly OKRs
• Total projects enrolled and NRTs enrolled in the marketplace
• Total time to enroll a project, and total time for farmer to input data for enrollment
• Customer satisfaction metrics as it relates to product

You’ll be a good culture fit here if you can...

• Handle a steep learning curve
• Know what it takes to build and ship enterprise-grade software
• Work with abstract ideas and requirements to create something more concrete
• Establish an environment where the Product team can be effective in accomplishing sprint deliverables
• Address team dynamics with a focus on continuous improvement
• Ensure a good relationship between the Product team and internal stakeholders 
• Know how to measure progress meaningfully
• Stay playful and light without taking things too seriously or personally
• Limit work in progress and stay focused on the current goal

Key challenges in this role

There is a lot of ambiguity in what we’re building, and it’ll be up to you to work with the appropriate internal stakeholders to sort through all the concerns and suggested requirements to make sure we’re still hitting our deliverables. You will also be dealing with multiple teams, each with their own stakeholders, and each with their own opinion on what should or should not be included in requirements. You must have a strong sense of self to navigate these waters and lead teams to clarity on what will or will not be implemented in a sprint. There are a lot of educated and strong opinions inside Nori, and it’s your job to synthesize all those into something we can build.

What’s the payoff for all this hard/fun work? 

• You’re not just working at some mobile ads startup—you’re directly helping build products to reverse climate change.
• You get to work with world-renowned experts in carbon sequestration and marketplace economics.
• There is a steep learning curve here, and for people who get excited by that, there’s no better place to be.
• We have a competitive benefits package including 100% of health, dental, and vision benefits for you and dependents, four weeks PTO, stock options, and NORI tokens.

Report Directly To The CEO

You will report directly to the CEO, Paul Gambill. Paul used to be an Agile project and product manager and so you two can geek out together on how to implement good Agile practices in these teams. Paul is an engineer, and prefers that if you find a problem you need to escalate, come to him with that problem somewhat well-understood, with a draft of a proposed set of solutions in mind. 

Join us on our mission to reverse climate change

By joining Nori at this time, you’ll help to shape our culture and help us to grow the company we hope to become. You’ll be helping us to solve some of the biggest challenges when it comes to creating a marketplace for carbon removal, from teamwork to technical implementations. You’ll learn a lot about the environment and agriculture. 

 What’s in it for you

• Four weeks paid time off, increases to five weeks after your first year. Plus holidays. Taking time off is essential, and we want you to recharge in whatever ways you see fit.
• Full medical, dental, vision benefits covered for you and dependents. It’s a great plan with a very low deductible. With an insurance company called Premera that is beloved in the Seattle region.
• Stock options.
• NORI tokens, proportional to the stock options.

Additional requirements for this position

This position will be located in Seattle, WA. But relocation is not necessary until Spring 2021 at the earliest—dependent on safety from the pandemic. We are working remotely today, but plan to be back in our Seattle office once it is safe to do so. This role will require some travel in the future, but it is expected that most work will happen in the office.

How to apply to join our team as Head of Product

On average, this form takes people between 30 min. to 60 min. to complete. How much time you invest is 100% up to you. However, please note that the more context and detail you provide, the more you'll get out of the exercise, and the easier it'll be for us to determine whether or not you'd be a fit for this role!

We strongly advise you to use your desktop computer (vs. your mobile device). Doing so will inspire you to produce a better writing sample.

Once you’ve submitted your form, you can expect to hear back from our team in the coming weeks.

Thank you in advance for your time!