Job description

ABOUT US Our mission is to reinvent the way people learn, starting with language. Learning a language can change a life by opening doors to new cultures, careers, and communities. Two billion people around the world are actively trying to learn a language, but the best way to learn (one-on-one tutoring) is hard to access at scale and hasn’t been meaningfully improved in decades. Speak is building a human-level, AI-powered tutor in your pocket: a conversation-first experience that lets learners actually speak, get instant feedback, and progress through carefully designed lessons. The result is a complete path from beginner to confident speaker across multiple languages. Speak first launched in South Korea in 2019, where Speak has now become the number one language learning app, and we now serve learners across many markets and 15+ languages. Speak is one of the world’s leading AI companies, with over $150m raised in venture investment from OpenAI, Accel, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and more, with a distributed team across San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, and Ljubljana. ABOUT THIS ROLE We're looking for a Product Lead to build the memory and intelligence layer that helps Speak know what each learner should do next. Speak's next step is not more disconnected lessons. It is a learning system with durable memory and personal intelligence: it knows what each learner should do next and makes that intelligence usable across lessons, voice, assessment, content, and reporting. This person will create the product and platform layer that lets Speak deliver the right learning experience at the right time across user memory, tutors, lessons, content, recommendations, assessments, evals, and AI systems. This starts as a hands-on Product Manager role with a clear Memory & Personal Intelligence home scope and broad company-level outcome ownership. As the area grows, management scope may become part of the path, but the first-order need is someone who can personally set product direction, integrate teams, and raise execution quality. WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING - Set Memory & Personal Intelligence product direction. - Own product architecture for longitudinal memory, personalization, sequencing, recommendations, feedback loops, and learner-state models. - Define interfaces between learning experiences, content systems, evals, AI platform, and learner-facing surfaces. - Create cross-team product clarity: principles, artifacts, product requirements, and decision frameworks that multiple pods can build against. - Build product quality loops that improve learning outcomes, trust, and team velocity. - Define the memory, learner-state model, and product interfaces that help multiple teams decide what a learner should do next. - Build the product architecture connecting assessment, content generation, voice practice, recommendations, and learner-facing next actions. - Create the instrumentation and quality loops that tell us whether personalization is improving learning, not just engagement. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Must-have qualifications - 6+ years of hands-on product experience, as well as Product Lead experience. - AI, ML, data, recommendations, personalization, platform, learning, or technical product experience. - Strong systems thinking and enough technical fluency to reason with engineers. - Product taste and user empathy, especially where platform decisions shape user-facing quality. - Excellent writing and ability to create artifacts that travel. - Ability to lead company-level outcomes from a Memory & Personal Intelligence home scope without drifting into abstract platform strategy. - High agency without assuming formal authority or direct reports on day one. Nice-to-have qualifications - Experience with assessment, learning science, health or outcomes products, experimentation, or B2B reporting. - Experience building a system or set of artifacts that multiple product teams adopted. Prior experience with proficiency, assessments, psychometrics, or education is not required. We care more about learning speed, systems reasoning, research judgment, and the ability to develop conviction in a new domain. WHY WORK AT SPEAK 1. Join a fantastic, tight-knit team at the right time: we're growing very quickly, we've most recently raised our Series C from some of the top investors in the valley, and we've achieved product-market fit in our initial markets. You'd join at a magical time when a single person could significantly change the course of the company. 2. Do your life's work with people you’ll love working with: we care strongly about our craft and want every person at Speak to feel like they're growing every day. We believe in the idea that working with people you both enjoy and have respect for makes everything better. We hire thoughtfully and only work with people we admire deeply. 3. Global in nature: We're live in over 40 countries and launching in a number of new markets soon. We have dedicated offices in San Francisco, Ljubljana, Seoul, Tokyo, and Taipei, and you’ll have the opportunity to talk to users in each of these regions on a regular basis as well as travel. 4. Impact people's lives in a major way: Learning a language is one of the single most life-changing skills one can learn, and right now 99% of people never achieve their goal because the process is broken. We’re helping millions of people achieve their goals and improve their lives. Speak does not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

Requirements

Must-haves

We're looking for a Product Lead to build the memory and intelligence layer that helps Speak know what each learner should do next.
Set Memory & Personal Intelligence product direction.
Own product architecture for longitudinal memory, personalization, sequencing, recommendations, feedback loops, and learner-state models.
Define interfaces between learning experiences, content systems, evals, AI platform, and learner-facing surfaces.
Create cross-team product clarity: principles, artifacts, product requirements, and decision frameworks that multiple pods can build against.
Build product quality loops that improve learning outcomes, trust, and team velocity.
Define the memory, learner-state model, and product interfaces that help multiple teams decide what a learner should do next.
Build the product architecture connecting assessment, content generation, voice practice, recommendations, and learner-facing next actions.
Create the instrumentation and quality loops that tell us whether personalization is improving learning, not just engagement.
Must-have qualifications
6+ years of hands-on product experience, as well as Product Lead experience.
AI, ML, data, recommendations, personalization, platform, learning, or technical product experience.
Strong systems thinking and enough technical fluency to reason with engineers.
Product taste and user empathy, especially where platform decisions shape user-facing quality.
Excellent writing and ability to create artifacts that travel.
Ability to lead company-level outcomes from a Memory & Personal Intelligence home scope without drifting into abstract platform strategy.
High agency without assuming formal authority or direct reports on day one.
Experience with assessment, learning science, health or outcomes products, experimentation, or B2B reporting.
Experience building a system or set of artifacts that multiple product teams adopted.
Prior experience with proficiency, assessments, psychometrics, or education is not required. We care more about learning speed, systems reasoning, research judgment, and the ability to develop conviction in a new domain.

Nice-to-haves

Nice-to-have qualifications

Application prep

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Keywords to mirror

aiml

Platform: ashby
Effort: quick