Founding Technical Project Manager

About Wizard
Wizard is an AI-native creative suite — a video editing platform built by editors, for editors. Our team comes from Apple, Disney, Netflix, Adobe, Sony, Google, and ILM, and we’re building the tools we always wished we had. Small team, high bar, ships constantly. We’re reimagining professional editing around what AI now makes possible, and we’re doing it fast.

The Role
The mission is simple to state and hard to do well: help the CEO turn product vision and features into sharp, well-written spec, prioritize the schedule to maximize engineering speed, and own that the team delivers on time and against spec.

Our CEO has a strong, fast product vision. You turn that vision into specs engineers can build from without guessing, sequence the work so the team stays unblocked and focused on what matters, and then make sure it actually ships — on time, and matching what was scoped. You own the “how and when” so the CEO can own the “what and why.” This is a job measured by what the team ships, not by whose name is on it.

What you’ll own

• Turn the CEO's product decisions into clear, unambiguous specs — surfacing open questions and getting them resolved with the CEO rather than guessing, so engineers never have to interpret.
• Prioritize and sequence the roadmap to squeeze the most out of a small team: minimize context-switching, keep the critical path moving, ship the most important thing first.
• Own delivery. The team ships on time and against spec — that’s your number. You catch slippage early, keep scope honest, and close the gap between “planned” and “shipped.”
• Break big, fuzzy ideas into concrete workstreams with owners, dependencies, and a clear definition of done.
• Run a lightweight operating rhythm — planning, standups, reviews — that keeps everyone aligned without adding bureaucracy.
• Kill blockers before they cost the team a day - the best version of this job is invisible, because nothing broke.
• Be the single source of truth on what’s being built, why, and when it lands — and give the CEO honest, real-time status, good news or bad.

You’re probably a fit if

• You’ve been a Technical Project Manager and worked with Product teams or eng-adjacent lead at a fast-moving product company — bonus for AI, media/video, or creative tools.
• You write exceptionally well. A messy 20-minute founder conversation comes out the other side as a spec engineers are glad to read.
• You have real technical intuition — enough to talk shop with engineers, reason about trade-offs, and scope work that’s actually achievable.
• You’re relentless about prioritization and about hitting dates. Shipping on time isn’t admin to you; it’s the job.
• You thrive in ambiguity and speed, and you bring order without red tape.
• High ownership, low ego. You’d rather the team win than take the credit.

Nice to have
A real love for video editing, filmmaking, VFX, or creative tooling.
Early/founding operator experience at a startup.
Fluency with modern tooling (Linear, Notion, etc.).

Details

• Location: On-site at HQ — this role lives or dies on close, in-person work with the CEO and engineers.
• Type: Full-time, founding.

If turning bold vision into shipped software gets you going — and you want to be the person who makes a small, elite team move even faster — let’s talk.