Product Manager
ironflow · San Diego ·
- Work mode
- Hybrid
- Employment
- Contract
- Category
- Product
About Ironflow AI
Our mission is simple: to build software to help people build extraordinary things.
We are building an AI-native ERP for aerospace, defense, and advanced manufacturing. Purchasing, inventory, planning, manufacturing, finance, and accounting: the core systems that determine whether companies can actually build and deliver.
Much of the industrial base still runs on software architectures designed decades ago. We think that is now a strategic problem.
Our mission is bigger than better software. If the United States and its allies need to build more ships, aircraft, missiles, drones, engines, satellites, and everything behind them, the companies doing that work need radically better systems.
We are building Ironflow around five values that define how we work: hard work, excellence, kindness, creativity, and teamwork. We put in the effort and follow through. We take pride in our work and keep raising the bar. We treat people with care and respect. We explore possibilities and find better ways. And we help each other succeed while taking responsibility for the shared outcome.
We are veterans, engineers, and operators who have lived the limitations of legacy systems firsthand. We are building the software we wish existed.
Why this role matters
Building great things does not happen by chance. Look at the state of legacy ERPs.
Our goal is not to recreate old workflows with a better interface. It is to rethink the entire experience of running a manufacturing company.
As a Product Manager, you will shape that experience. You will decide how people and AI work together, where complexity disappears, and how software gives people back their time.
You are going to put humans back at the center of building things, so they can spend less time fighting systems and more time getting building.
About the role
You will own product direction for the finance and accounting core of Flow, including the general ledger, AP, AR, costing, close, and financial reporting.
You will work directly with controllers, CFOs, and operators to turn messy real-world workflows into clear product decisions and software that works.
This is not feature management. You will help define the financial backbone of a new ERP for the companies building the arsenal of democracy.
What you will do
Own the finance and accounting roadmap
- Set priorities across the F&A product. Build the core capabilities customers need today while identifying the workflows and AI-native experiences they will expect tomorrow.
- Use customer, market, and competitive insight to continuously refine the roadmap. Design workflows where people and AI agents work together to eliminate manual work and improve decision-making.
Turn customer problems into products
- Work directly with controllers, accountants, CFOs, and operators to understand how work gets done, where spreadsheets still fill the gaps, and where trust breaks down.
- Turn those conversations into clear product specifications with the problem, workflow, business rules, and acceptance criteria.
- Break large capabilities into sequenced, shippable pieces that engineering can start building immediately.
Ship and improve
- Test features before release, validate them against real customer scenarios, and catch gaps before customers do.
- Build realistic test cases and demo data, write clear release notes, and stay close to customers after launch to learn what works and what needs to improve.
Who you are
- You communicate clearly. You can take a messy 45-minute customer conversation and turn it into a one-page problem statement that a designer and engineer can act on.
- You are comfortable with customers. You can run discovery, lead demos, and handle hard questions from operators and finance leaders who have seen software fail before.
- You ship. You would rather get a well-scoped first version into customers’ hands, learn, and improve than wait for the perfect answer.
- You have strong product judgment. You can separate what a customer asks for from the underlying problem, then decide what the product should actually do.
- You learn complex systems quickly. You can enter an unfamiliar domain, identify the important relationships and constraints, and reduce complexity into something clear and usable.
- You think analytically and from first principles. You use customer evidence, data, and judgment to make decisions when the answer is not obvious.
- You care about details without losing the plot. You catch the edge cases and inconsistencies that matter, while staying focused on the larger customer outcome.
- You work well with engineers. You can explain the problem, reason through tradeoffs, and stay engaged from idea through implementation and release.
Nice to have
- You have hands-on finance and accounting experience in manufacturing, or have served manufacturing clients through audit or advisory.
- You understand how manufacturing economics flow through the books: inventory valuation, standard and actual costing, BOM and routing roll-ups, purchase price variance, WIP, labor absorption, scrap, rework, and the general ledger.
- You are fluent in core accounting operations, including AP, AR, bank reconciliation, accruals, close, and financial reporting.
- Experience with government contract accounting is a plus, including job costing, indirect rates, DCAA timekeeping, and Cost Accounting Standards.
- You have worked in an early-stage environment where the product, process, and team were still being built.
- Product management or adjacent experience in B2B SaaS is valuable, especially in ERP, accounting, implementation, solutions consulting, or financial operations software.
- Experience implementing, administering, or replacing systems such as NetSuite, Epicor, SAP Business One, Dynamics, or Acumatica is also useful.