Job at a glance
About Patch Patch is the hyperlocal news and information platform for 15,000 U.S. communities, reaching 25 million monthly users and 3 million active email subscribers. We use AI throughout our business, from gathering and delivering the news to helping local partners connect with customers. Our 85-person newsroom helps people understand what is happening where they live; our events, classifieds, business listings and advertising products help local organizations reach them.
Patch spans a high-traffic website, iOS and Android apps, email, a custom CMS, user-generated content, payments, data and advertising systems. We’ve used AI to expand our platform nationwide, to offer new digital products for our customers and to improve workflow and capabilities for local journalists. The Role We are looking for a hands-on Vice President, Product to lead AI innovation, own Patch’s product roadmap and lead our Product and Engineering organizations.
The portfolio includes Patch’s core platform, web and mobile apps, owned-and-operated digital products, and advertising products developed in close partnership with Revenue. You will also spearhead Patch’s efforts to expand the impact of AI across every facet of the organization—from how our teams work to the products, services and experiences we create for customers and users. This role is for a product builder who is obsessed with business outcomes—not output—and who can connect customer jobs, company priorities and technical reality.
You will set direction, make hard trade-offs, stay close to the work and help strong teams ship products that matter to local users, businesses and event marketers. What You Will Lead AI initiatives and development. Lead AI products for end users, customers and internal workflows. Product strategy and roadmap. Turn company goals and customer needs into a focused roadmap with clear outcomes, sequencing and trade-offs.
Jobs to Be Done product development. Build a rigorous practice around customer jobs, evidence, prototyping, validation and post-launch learning—without creating process for its own sake. Patch’s digital portfolio. Advance the core platform, apps and owned-and-operated products while improving the shared capabilities that let Patch move faster. Revenue product partnership. Work closely with Revenue to develop advertising and commercial products that solve real customer problems and produce measurable growth.
Product and Engineering leadership. Create strong operating alignment across the two functions, develop talent, raise the quality of decisions and delivery, and build genuine followership. What You Bring A record of building, shipping and scaling successful digital products, with clear evidence of business impact—not simply roadmap completion. Meaningful technical credibility: experience as an engineer and/or managing engineering teams, and the ability to reason directly about architecture, data, feasibility and trade-offs.
Deep fluency in Jobs to Be Done product development and the judgment to apply it pragmatically. Experience with scaled digital products for small and midsize businesses is a significant plus, as is exposure to programmatic advertising, marketplaces, subscriptions, local commerce or audience products. Exceptional prioritization: the ability to say no, concentrate resources on the few bets that matter and change course when evidence demands it.
A hands-on operating style. You prototype, inspect the data, talk with customers and work through details with the team; you do not delegate the substance of product leadership. A track record of developing talent, creating followership and leading with curiosity, candor, self-awareness and low ego. Product and Technology Environment Patch’s products span consumer web and mobile, email, publishing, user-generated content, payments, data, search and advertising integrations.
The technology environment includes JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, Drupal/PHP, AWS, Heroku, Pantheo