Senior product manager, methodology

The role

Product Managers at Watershed are the glue that unites engineering, design, climate science, and go‑to‑market under a single cohesive vision—and then ship it. This is a highly technical, hands‑on, and cross‑functional role: you will set direction for the Methodology team, which owns the standard methodologies, datasets, and developer tools that turn raw business data into auditable sustainability data.

No footprint is actually measured by counting atoms—every footprint relies on methodologies, emission factors, and reference datasets to translate activity data into emissions. Getting this right is what makes corporate sustainability reporting credible. Watershed centralizes that effort across hundreds of enterprises, and the Methodology team is the engine that keeps it accurate, current, and opinionated toward decarbonization.

You will partner with climate scientists, data engineers, verifiers, and standards bodies to decide what we build, why it matters, and how we deliver—with a relentless focus on scientific rigor, customer impact, and scale.

You will

• Own the roadmap for Watershed’s corporate methodology: define the vision, strategy, and north‑star metrics for our data artifacts that constitute methodology (ingestion templates, activity types, external source databases, reporting queries etc)
• Own verifier partnerships: source, negotiate, and manage relationships with third‑party verification and assurance providers, ensuring Watershed’s methodology earns external trust and meets evolving audit requirements.
• Navigate the open‑data and standards ecosystem: build and maintain relationships with open‑dataset providers, standards‑setting bodies, and industry alliances; evaluate when to adopt, contribute to, or build alternatives.
• Become an expert on the customer: sit with sustainability leads, data teams, and auditors to uncover pain points, validate hypotheses, and turn insights into product requirements.
• Design for correctness and auditability: work with climate scientists and data engineers to ensure methodologies are accurate, transparent, and defensible under regulatory scrutiny.
• Partner across the org: align roadmaps with Sales, Customer Success, Sustainability Advisors, Reporting, Supply Chain, and Finance teams so that methodology investments land successfully across every product surface.
• Leverage AI to do all of the above

You might be a fit if you

• Have 5+ years of product management experience in enterprise SaaS, with a track record of shipping data products, datasets, or data platforms—ideally at high‑growth startups.
• Have experience working with open datasets, open‑source projects, or industry data alliances—you understand the dynamics of adopting, contributing to, and building on shared data infrastructure.
• Have managed external partnerships where you were the primary owner of the relationship, not just a stakeholder—bonus if those partnerships involved data providers, verifiers, auditors, or standards bodies.
• Have built products for enterprise customers and can navigate compliance, change‑management, and the messy realities of data quality at scale.
• Combine customer anthropology with data‑driven intuition: you can spend a day digging through emission factor databases or Python notebooks, then jump on a call to map a CSO’s reporting journey.
• Thrive in ambiguity and love turning fuzzy, conflicting inputs—from regulators, scientists, customers, and verifiers—into a clear, inspiring product vision.
• Communicate with precision: whether writing a methodology white paper, presenting a roadmap to leadership, or explaining a technical trade‑off to a customer, you articulate complex ideas simply and convincingly.

Bonus points

• You have direct experience in climate, sustainability, or environmental science—whether through a prior role, academic background, or deep personal interest.
• You’ve worked on products that involve regulatory or accounting standards and understand how standards shape product decisions.

LocationThis role is based in San Francisco. We believe colocated time accelerates collaboration for platform‑level challenges.

If you’re eager to own the science and data that power climate action at scale, we’d love to meet you.

Must be willing to work from an office 4 days per week (except for remote roles)

Watershed has hub offices in San Francisco, New York, London, and Mexico City and satellite offices in Denver, Sydney, Paris, and Berlin. Where we have offices, employees are expected to be in office for 4 days per week. Certain jobs are open to being remote and will be specifically noted on the jobs page and in the job description if so.

What’s the interview process like?

It starts the same for every candidate: getting to know the team members through 1 to 2 conversations about Watershed, your experience, and your interests. Next steps can vary by role, but usual next steps are a skill or experience interview (e.g. a coding interview for an engineer, a portfolio review for a designer, deeper experience call for other roles) which leads to a virtual or in person interview panel. We prioritize transparency and lack of surprise throughout the process.

What if I need accommodations for my interview?

At Watershed, we are dedicated to ensuring an inclusive recruitment process. We provide reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities, long-term conditions, mental health needs, religious observances, neurodivergence, or pregnancy-related support requirements. If you need assistance during your process, please contact your recruiter.