Forward Deployed Product Manager

About the Company

Valon is building the AI-native operating system for regulated finance, starting with mortgage servicing.

We're a Series C company backed by a16z, transforming industries that others have written off as too complex to innovate.

Rather than build on top of broken legacy systems, we took a different approach: we built and operate our own mortgage servicing business managing $110+ billion in loans. This wasn't the end goal, it was how we deeply understood the complexity needed to build software that actually works in regulated industries.

The results speak for themselves. We've transformed mortgage servicing from a 0% margin business into 60%+ margins while dramatically improving customer experience. Major enterprise contracts are now deploying across the industry.

ValonOS is our unified platform that makes every process structured and programmable and it is perfectly positioned for the AI era. When everything flows through one system with rich data, AI agents don't just automate tasks, they continuously improve entire operations. Mortgage servicing is just the beginning of our vision to transform regulated industries and beyond.

About the Role

At Valon, we build software where others hesitate: regulated, high-stakes financial systems. To make ValonOS the AI-native operating system for regulated finance, we need people who can live at the intersection of customer deployments and core product.

As a Forward Deployed Product Manager (FDPM), you are the connective tissue between customer deployments and R&D: ensuring both the success of specific client buildouts and the creation of elegant, reusable capabilities. You’ll build beyond one-off fixes by turning field insights into product leverage, shaping a platform that works not just for one client, but for the entire industry.

Unlike Deployment Strategists—who own client relationships and operational delivery—you focus on building technical solutions & translating the lessons from the field into generalized products that compound over time.

What You’ll Do

• Surface & Translate Requirements: Partner with Deployment Strategists and clients to scope real customer needs and turn them into crisp product definitions.
  
  
• Generalize from the Field: Abstract messy, one-off asks into scalable product patterns, balancing immediacy with long-term product principles.
  
  
• Design Extensions & Integrations: Define and build integrations and workflow extensions with engineering that become reusable platform modules.
  
  
• Represent the Customer in Product: Ensure roadmap decisions reflect deployment reality, validating solutions against live operational needs.
  
  
• Create Leverage for Scale: Build playbooks, documentation, and rollout strategies so DS teams can scale adoption across customers.
  
  
• Close the Loop: When gaps emerge in the field, diagnose the root cause, propose solutions, and work with clients, deployment strategists, and engineers to resolve them.

You Are

• A Systems Thinker: You can dive into a client’s specific workflows, then zoom out to design abstractions that scale across many.
  
  
• Technically Fluent: You don’t need to code, but you can reason about workflows, APIs, ledgers, integrations, and data models with engineers. You love understanding how complex systems fit together.
  
  
• Customer-Driven, Product-Minded: You embed with customers to see the messy truth, but your north star is building reusable product.
  
  
• Collaborative: You thrive in high-trust squads where DS, PMs, engineers, and operators co-own outcomes.
  
  
• Execution-Focused: You can run zero-to-one builds in ambiguous environments and ship.
  
  
• Complexity-Loving: Where others see edge cases and risk, you see puzzles and opportunity. Complexity doesn’t scare you—it motivates you.

Why Valon

We’re not just modernizing a broken system, we’re replacing the core. Mortgage servicing was our proving ground: $100B+ loans, 50-state licensing, industry-leading compliance. Now we’re licensing ValonOS to the industry.

As a Forward Deployed PM, you’ll shape that journey. You’ll see firsthand how the most important systems in the American economy run today, and help build the software that will define how they operate tomorrow.

This role is also a launchpad, many FDPMs will grow into core product leadership or practice-area ownership as Valon expands beyond m