Product Manager

The way companies innovate is broken. The systems built to create and protect ideas can’t keep up with the pace of change. Today, 90% of S&P 500 company value is intangible (e.g., in intellectual property) - yet R&D and IP teams spend half their time buried in manual work, sifting through patents and paperwork instead of pushing the frontier forward. The tools of creating and protecting are stuck in the past. We’re here to fix that. Ankar is building the R&D tools for the AI era and defining what applied research will look like in the next 20 years. We’re building infrastructure and product experiences our customers rely on every day. You’ll translate messy, ambiguous problems into clean, dependable software—and you’ll do it at the cutting-edge of AI. We’re at an inflection point:

• We’ve raised >$24M to date from Tier-1 VCs like Atomico, Index Ventures, Norrsken, Daphni, and angels like the Founder of Hugging Face, CEO from Datadog, and Leaders from DeepMind and OpenAI.

• We’re already working with the world’s most innovative companies including Fortune 500 company L’Oréal and global law firm Vorys

• Expanding our world-class team with alumni from Palantir, Amazon, and BCG to tackle the $1T+ innovation market. We’re just getting started.

What you’ll be doing Build world-class product. Design, build, and maintain scalable, reliable systems and user-facing product experiences that customers depend on.

• Translate messy problems into dependable software. Work from first principles to turn ambiguous requirements into clear, maintainable, production-ready solutions.

• Ship fast and iterate constantly. Deliver quickly, learn from real feedback, and refine the product week by week with direct access to customers.

• Own the mission end-to-end. Take full ownership of new product work from design to implementation, release, feedback and iteration.

• Drive clarity, velocity, and long-term quality. Establish patterns, improve feedback practices, and help shape product direction as Ankar’s mission evolves.

• Partner deeply with engineers and customers. Collaborate closely with engineering, design, and customer-facing teams to ensure what we build is useful, usable, and impactful.

Qualifications:

• 4+ years of experience leading the end-to-end delivery of customer-facing products.

• Experience owning projects independently, including problem discovery, scoping, execution, rollout, and iteration based on feedback and data.

• Strong analytical and systems thinking: ability to reason across design and engineering constraints, and strive for maintainable product solutions.

• Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, driving alignment across teams.

• Strong product intuition and experience partnering closely with engineering and design to define user workflows and ship high-quality experiences.

• Experience in fast-moving startups or high-ownership environments, with a bias toward action and measurable outcomes.

Culture at Ankar: Culture at Ankar is how we think, build, and operate. We’re building a generational company that redefines how the world’s best R&D teams create and protect ideas.

• Contrarian - we think from first principles: We think deeply, question assumptions, and build from first principles. The best ideas come from clarity and rigour.

• Creative - we build with taste: We’re building the R&D tools for the AI era and shaping what applied research looks like over the next 20 years. We care about precision, quality, and systems that last.

• Competitiveness - we play to win: We move with urgency and set a very high bar for ourselves and each other. Every win raises the bar. Every challenge sharpens us.

This role is not for you if...

• You need a highly structured environment, a predefined playbook, regular working hours, or a schedule that never requires travel. We operate with high autonomy and ownership, expect our team to go above and beyond, be obsessed with our mission and thrive in ambiguity rather than wait for direction.

• You prefer long planning cycles and certainty before acting. We move quickly, ship often, and adapt based on customer feedback and new information.

• You want to manage the work rather than do the work. We're builders first, and everyone is expected to contribute directly to creating exceptional products.

• You take it personally when ideas are challenged, priorities shift, or work gets redirected. We care more about finding the right answer than defending a particular one.

What we put behind our people Building at the frontier takes exceptional people. We invest accordingly.

• Health Insurance : Full private health & dental coverage for you and your dependents.

• Pension: Flexible pension scheme with up to 5% employer matching on qualifying earnings.

• Food on us: Team lunches twice a week, plus dinner when working late in the office.

• Cycle to work: Green Commute initiative scheme (up to £3k) to help you get a new bike tax-free.

• Way we work: We combine deep, in-person collaboration (3 days/week in our Shoreditch office) with flexibility and trust. What matters is ownership, impact, and results, not where you work from.

• Visa sponsorship: Yes