VP, ProductYou'll inherit a strong product and a capable team, but that's the starting point, not the job. The job is figuring out what underwriting becomes once AI stops assisting and starts deciding, and getting there faster than the market expects. You prototype to find out, not to perform speed. You're drawn to this problem because the underwriter of the future is one of the more interesting design problems in software right now.
In this role, you will:
- Set the direction for what AI-native underwriting looks like at Sixfold, and hold a 12-month theme even as the tactics under it change frequently
- Build the first version of new ideas yourself: a prototype, a working demo, a lighthouse customer test, before asking the team to build the tenth
- Stay current enough on AI's leading edge to have a real opinion on where things are going, not just what's already shipped
- Represent Sixfold's view of where underwriting is headed with customers, partners, and the industry, so people outside the company measure their own thinking against yours
- Take ownership of the existing product and team and raise the bar on how they operate, without mistaking "it's not broken" for "it's finished"
- Partner closely with design and engineering so prototyping speed doesn't turn into technical debt. Speed and guardrails are both your job, not competing ones
What Success Looks LikeWithin three months, we expect you to have a visceral understanding of our risk-reasoning AI. If you're still relying on our current product docs instead of having your own opinion on where the edges are broken, we've missed the mark. By the end of the first quarter, our engineering team should be moving faster, not because you managed them, but because you provided more clarity to them
About You- You think about the underwriter of the future the way some people think about a chess position. You can't stop turning it over, and you have hot takes about what's underrated
- You said you built something yourself, you mean you wrote the prompt chains, ran the eval, sat with the customer, not that you wrote the spec and someone else built it
- You took from zero to production, and you know the ARR, retention, or adoption number it moved
- Facing a new problem, your instinct is to build something small and get it in front of a real customer rather than write a spec. You find the lighthouse customer, get honest feedback, and iterate from there
- You can hold a clear 12-month theme for the product. The destination doesn't move even if the path there does. You just don't confuse that with a fixed roadmap of mechanisms, since you expect to rebuild those every few months as reality changes
- You use AI heavily in how you work, but you know the difference between AI helping you get somewhere faster and AI deciding where you end up. The taste, the risk judgment, and the call on what's worth building are still yours
- You've inherited good teams before and know the difference between "this is broken, replace it" and "this is good, but it has to improve." You default to the latter until proven otherwise
What we're not looking for: someone who wants to manage a team more than solve the problem; someone who can't prototype and therefore can't keep pace.
Additional Information- Expected salary: $245,000 - $285,000 + equity + benefits
- Advertised and actual salary ranges may differ by geographic area, work experience, education, and/or skill level.
- About half the company works in the NYC office 3-4 days a week.
- This position does not include visa sponsorship. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without requiring employer sponsorship.
