Job Description

About Protocol Labs

Protocol Labs is an innovation network of 750+ teams, projects, and movements with a common mission: To drive breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. For us, decentralization is more than just a rallying cry; its an operational ethos and a belief system baked into the products we develop. Protocol Labs operates as an innovation network built to help breakthrough technologies move from bold R&D into real-world adoption. Through funding, mentorship, and deep network support, PL has enabled pioneering teams to cross the critical R&D chasm and bring transformative products to market. Our network has supported projects like IPFS, Filecoin, and libp2p, alongside emerging efforts in neurotech, AI, and digital rights, demonstrating the breadth of impact possible when world-class founders and investors connect through Protocol Labs. Our key focus areas include digital human rights, upgrading economies and governance systems, safe AI, and neurotech. For more information on Protocol Labs and our focus areas, please watch Juan Benets talk from PL Summit 2023 and the 2024 PL Summit Video (Remote Update).

About Polaris

As an innovation network rooted in a culture of collaboration, Protocol Labs requires a fresh approach to advancing emerging technologies. Polaris builds the infrastructure that enables Protocol Labs teams, projects, and movements, and members to flourish. We create the programs, tools, and events that connect, strengthen, and build the teams that drive breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. We manage network membership and track network data to continuously gauge the growth and state of maturity of Protocol Labs across a number of critical pillars, and manage the Protocol Labs brand and strategic marketing initiatives. At the core of everything Polaris does, is the Protocol Labs mission and the desire to progress innovation.

About the Role

The Network Product Lead for the Protocol Labs Network is the singular operating owner accountable for innovation throughput (as quantified in innovation units or IUs) across PLs platform, programs, and capital mechanisms. This leader treats the network itself as the product, engineering and steering it to produce more innovation, faster.

You will oversee the Platform, Programs, Focus Area Programs, and Engagement teams within Polaris, unifying them under a single portfolio and decision calculus: Expected IU per $. You will design the systems, tools, and operating rhythms that allow PL to experiment, measure, and continuously improve the network from the underlying graph and matching algorithms to the incentives, events, and mechanisms that power collaboration.

This is an organizational/industry leadership role responsible for defining the long-term product vision for PL as an innovation network and building the mechanisms that make that vision measurable, repeatable, and exothermic.

Key Responsibilities

• Engineer the Network: Treat the PL network as a product: a living graph of people, projects, capital, and artifacts. Continuously design interventions that improve its performance.
• Own the Unified Portfolio: Run one operating system across platform, programs, and capital. Allocate budget based on Expected IU per $, applying kill/double discipline and quarterly reallocation.
• Oversee Core Product Areas:
  • Platform: Identity and Graph, Discovery and Matching, Messaging and Office Hours, Reputation and Integrity, Incentives Rails (including the Alignment Asset).
  • Programs: Events, grants, fellowships, reviewer markets, and admissions mechanisms.
  • Engagement: Member journey, user experience, and growth loops.
• Lead Experimentation and Measurement: Establish the methods and metrics that govern all interventions. Institutionalize PAPs, ERBs, and the State of the Graph process.
• Partner Across PL Infra: Collaborate with Juan Benet (your manager), Focus Area Leads, and the rest of the team to ensure network-wide alignment, transparency, and evidence-based decision-making.
• Steward Integrity and Incentives: Define and maintain exclusivity, admissions, and incentive mechanisms (for example, the Alignment Asset and reviewer markets) that sustain fairness and collaboration.
• Communicate Results: Publish quarterly State of the Graph updates and drive strategic decisions based on measurable impact.

What Were Looking For

Experience

• 1215+ years of experience leading product, platform, or ecosystem organizations; 5+ years at VP/CPO level or equivalent.
• Proven track record designing and scaling networked or marketplace products with strong flywheel dynamics.
• Experience running rigorous experimentation programs and making resource decisions grounded in data and modeling.
• Comfort operating in complex, decentralized, or multi-stakeholder environments.
• Demonstrated success leading cross-functional teams across product, engineering, programs, and operations.

Skills & Capabilities

• Exceptional systems thinker, able to translate abstract network models into concrete products and programs.
• Strong command of incentive and mechanism design to drive user behavior, experimentation, and data-driven prioritization.
• Ability to manage a portfolio of theory-driven and experimental network science to guide decisions that maximize Expected IU per $.
• Skilled in aligning software, human, and capital systems under a single product architecture.
• Excellent written and verbal communicator, especially through concise decision documents and portfolio reviews.
• Adept at leading through influence, managing ambiguity, and balancing exploration with execution.
• Background in social network growth and incentives or marketplace incentives and dynamics.

Mindset & Approach

• Operates from a network-native mindset: builds leverage, not headcount.
• Sees structure and opportunity in complexity; designs mechanisms that scale trust and collaboration.
• Balances rigor and pragmatism: comfortable with good enough to test while maintaining long-term scientific standards.
• Deep belief in decentralization as a coordination advantage.
• Curious, experimental, and mission-driven: committed to advancing breakthroughs that push humanity forward

Why Join Us?

In this role, youll have the opportunity to build the connective tissue of a global innovation network: designing how world-class researchers, founders, and investors collaborate to solve humanitys hardest problems. Youll lead one of the most ambitious product experiments on the planet: engineering innovation itself.

Youll join a deeply mission-driven, distributed team that values autonomy, experimentation, and evidence-based decision-making.

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