Associate Product Manager - New Graduate Program

Relay is a growth-stage tech company in Raleigh, NC, building the System of Action for Physical Operations. Frontline teams catch problems all day and say so over the radio. Almost none of it survives the shift. Relay captures it and turns it into action, through a rugged smart radio that works the way teams already do and a cloud platform that learns the operation, routes issues to the right people, and stays open until they're resolved. Fifteen years innovating in voice, 2 billion messages, 40+ Fortune 500 customers. Now we're expanding our Product team and looking for the next generation of product builders to help us scale.

We are seeking driven, high-achieving undergraduate and graduate students with an expected graduation date in December 2026 or May 2027 to join our Associate Product Manager program. We view this cohort as a vital part of our future, people who want to make a greater impact sooner and aren't content waiting years to make a real mark.

The Opportunity

This is not a typical entry-level role. As an APM at Relay, you will have meaningful ownership from day one, not shadowing, not supporting, but leading. You'll be embedded directly in our product and engineering teams, driving real product decisions that affect real customers. You'll be exposed to every dimension of how a high-growth startup brings a product to market: from shaping the roadmap and guiding engineering, to engaging customers, analyzing data, and integrating AI into our platform.

If you're someone who wants to accelerate your career, learn by doing, and have a direct line of sight to the impact you create — this is the role for you.

Job Overview

As an Associate Product Manager (APM) at Relay, you will help define and deliver products that drive our business forward. You'll partner closely with engineering and cross-functional stakeholders to ship features that delight customers and accelerate Relay's growth.

You will act as the crucial bridge between our engineering team and the rest of the business, translating customer needs, market signals, and stakeholder input into clear, well-framed problems for engineering to solve. This is a hands-on role designed for someone who thrives at the intersection of technology, customer empathy, and business impact. You'll be encouraged to leverage AI and automation to push the boundaries of what our products can do. Due to the highly collaborative nature of this role, there is a 5 day in-office requirement at our Raleigh, NC headquarters.

Our Product Philosophy

At Relay, Product Management is rarely about having all the answers; it is about having the most complete context, maintaining discipline, and acting as the steady hand that guides our teams forward. In this role, you will be expected to:

• Provide Context, Not Just Tasks: You will not simply hand over a list of stakeholder requests. You will deliver well-framed, clearly articulated problems to Engineering, ensuring they understand not just what we are building, but also the clear rationale for why it matters right now.
• Own Stakeholder Friction: When issues arise, you will absorb and resolve them. You will understand the technical constraints of your product area well enough to solve issues directly with stakeholders, rather than bringing raw, unfiltered issues to the engineering team.
• Be a Calming, Decisive Presence: You will act as a buffer against competing demands, ensuring you do not bring chaos, panic, or unnecessary urgency to engineering.
• Contribute to Global Optimization: You will synthesize business objectives and technical constraints, and surface your recommendations to product leadership so they can optimize and prioritize across all engineering workstreams, cutting through organizational noise to determine the highest and best use of the team's time.

What You Will Do

Product Strategy & Delivery

• Drive the roadmap for your product area, collaborating with Engineering to deliver viable, high-impact products and ensure timely, high-quality delivery.
• Contribute to the end-to-end product lifecycle, from ideation and research through development, launch, and post-launch analysis.
• Write detailed user stories for both new features and product enhancements.
• Participate actively in sprint planning and stand-ups to ensure clarity and momentum throughout the delivery process.

Customer & Stakeholder Engagement

• Develop a deep understanding of your users—whether external customers or internal teams—through interviews, data analysis, and direct engagement.
• Participate in customer visits and calls to identify opportunities for product innovation and differentiation.
• Document, analyze, and prioritize feedback through structured discovery work and review of feedback channels.
• Represent the voice of the customer in sprint planning and product reviews to ensure that business and user goals remain aligned.
• Drive product adoption and enablement by developing clear release notes, training materials, and alignment sessions with go-to-market and customer-facing teams.

AI & Automation Integration

• Collaborate with our engineering team to fine-tune models that harness our proprietary data sources and deliver durable customer value.
• Proactively identify opportunities to leverage AI/ML to enhance our products, derive deeper customer insights, and unlock new value for users.

What You Will Bring to This Role

• Expected graduation date of December 2026 or May 2027, with a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Business, Economics, Computer Science, or a related technical or business field with a minimum GPA of 3.5
• A strong blend of business and technical acumen, with the ability to engage meaningfully and add value in discussions encompassing both technology and business strategy.
• Intellectual Honesty & Humility: The ability to form well-reasoned positions while holding them loosely, always ready to abandon them when new data disproves the underlying hypotheses.
• Hypothesis-Driven Delivery: The ability to reduce complex problems to their core and identify the simplest, most elegant solutions to test your assumptions.
• Curiosity about emerging technologies: a keen interest in staying abreast of cutting-edge technologies, particularly within the AI and automation space, and identifying how they can create new value for users.
• A passion for entrepreneurship with the ability to thrive and react proactively to changing business needs within a dynamic, high-growth startup environment.
• A builder mindset and eagerness to roll up your sleeves and defeat inertia to create customer value.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build strong relationships across internal teams and stakeholders.
• Comfort with ambiguity: an ability to step back from complex problems, challenge initial assumptions, and identify simpler or more creative paths forward — rather than defaulting to brute force
• A point of view: the confidence to form and defend a clear recommendation, not just map a process
• A direct collaboration style: an eagerness to work side-by-side with engineers and technical teams, not just through intermediaries