Senior Product Manager - UX & Growth

About Joaia

Joaia is an AI startup founded in 2024, building at the frontier of travel and discovery. We give tourism destinations across Europe the tools to unlock their local knowledge and turn it into agentic AI guides that reason, remember, and adapt. Destinations build and own their guides themselves. Travelers get something that didn't exist before.

Imagine a guide that knows every hidden bar in Zurich's alternative scene, a Roman merchant who brings the ancient origins of Chur to life, or a carnival insider who walks you through Basel's Fasnacht tradition with the depth of someone who has lived it for decades. Each guide has its own personality, its own knowledge domain, its own way of telling a story. They can be fictional characters, digital twins of historical figures, local experts, or thematic specialists. The possibilities are just beginning to open up.

We work with destinations like Zurich Tourism, Basel Tourism, Luzern Tourism, Graubünden Ferien, and more are joining every month. We are a small, focused team on a mission to make the world's local knowledge accessible to every traveler, so that anyone, anywhere, can discover a place with the depth and curiosity it deserves. If that mission excites you, come build it with us.

The Role

Every guide experience lives or dies in the product. How easily a destination builds and manages their guides with our Products. How naturally a traveler interacts with it on the ground. Your job is to make both sides work well.

As our first dedicated Product Manager you own the full improvement loop across Joaia's live applications. You work closely with design and engineering, you talk to customers, you dig into the data, and you ship meaningful changes that move the needle.

The core challenge is that our paying customer and our end user are not the same person. Destinations have their priorities. Travelers have their needs. The best person for this role understands both, can tell them apart, and knows when to push back in service of the better outcome.

Real ownership from day one. Room to grow as the company scales.

What You'll Do

• Analyze how destination teams and visitors interact with Joaia's applications
• Identify friction points, drop-offs, usage patterns, and optimization opportunities
• Gather and structure feedback from customers
• Translate user needs and customer input into clear, prioritized product improvements
• Work with Product Design and Engineering on UX/UI concepts, flows, and feature development
• Define, plan, and test new features and optimizations across live applications
• Monitor product performance and measure the impact of changes over time
• Stay close to customer needs through direct touchpoints and occasional hands-on support for existing clients

What We're Looking For

• Senior-level experience (6+ years) in product management
• Experience with B2B2C products or platforms where the paying customer and end user are different is a strong plus
• Proven track record improving live digital products through analytics, user research, and experimentation
• Strong product judgment with experience working closely with customers while keeping the end user perspective at the center. You know how to find the balance between what a partner wants and what their users actually need.
• Experience in a founder-led or early-stage company where you had to create structure, not just operate within it
• Hands-on by default, strategic by nature
• Strong understanding of UX, product flows, and how digital experiences drive engagement and conversion

What We Offer

• Real ownership of a live product used by destinations and travelers today
• Equity / stock options - you're building this alongside us
• A small, honest team where decisions get made fast and your input shapes strategy
• Hybrid work setup based in Zurich

How to Apply

Tell us why you fit. Attach your CV and optional link to relevant work.

We take hiring seriously. Our process includes structured evaluation with real tasks, because this role requires demonstrated judgment, not just a strong interview.

And one more thing: we know the perfect candidate on paper doesn't always exist. If you don't tick every box but genuinely believe you could make a difference here, apply anyway. We care more about how you think and what you've built than whether your CV matches every line of this description.