What is a Product Manager at Athelas?

As a Product Manager at Athelas, you are the driving force behind products that operate at the intersection of healthcare, technology, and operational efficiency. This role requires an intense bias for action, a deep understanding of user workflows, and the ability to execute complex initiatives at an exceptionally rapid pace. You will be responsible for defining product requirements, designing user flows, and launching features that directly impact patient care and business operations.

At Athelas, the overarching philosophy is "speed above all else." This is not just a catchphrase; it is the core operational metric by which your success will be measured. You will be expected to rapidly synthesize ambiguous information, make decisive product choices, and push features to market without sacrificing essential quality. The environment is highly demanding and rigorous, tailored for individuals who thrive in high-stakes, high-output scenarios.

You will work closely with engineering teams, business stakeholders, and leadership to bring concepts from zero to one. This role is inherently cross-functional, requiring you to speak the language of technical architecture with Engineering Managers while simultaneously aligning product strategy with Business Stakeholders. If you are deeply passionate about building impactful products and are prepared for a highly immersive, fast-paced work culture, this role offers unparalleled opportunities for ownership.

Common Interview Questions

The questions you face at Athelas will test your ability to think on your feet, structure ambiguous problems, and align with their high-velocity culture. The following examples reflect the patterns and themes frequently encountered by candidates.

Product Strategy and Execution

These questions test your ability to design features, prioritize roadmaps, and push products to market quickly.

• How would you improve the current Athelas product dashboard based on the demo videos on our website?
• Walk me through a time you had to launch a product with an impossibly tight deadline. How did you ensure "speed above all else" without breaking the core functionality?
• We want to launch a new feature for patient onboarding. Map out the user flow and tell me what the MVP looks like.
• How do you balance building for scale versus building for immediate speed and deployment?
• Describe a time you had to pivot your product strategy completely based on sudden business stakeholder feedback.

Navigating Ambiguity and Problem Solving

Expect these questions to feel open-ended or slightly vague. Your goal is to provide the missing structure.

• How would you design a system to track medical device inventory across thousands of remote clinics?
• If engineering tells you a critical feature will take three months, but the business needs it in three weeks, how do you resolve the conflict?
• Walk me through how you would define success for a product that has no existing baseline metrics.
• What would you do if you were given a product mandate with zero documentation and the original engineers had left the company?

Behavioral and Culture Fit

These questions assess your work style, your resilience, and your alignment with the demanding Athelas culture.

• Our culture requires working 10-12 hours a day, often including weekends. Tell me about an environment you worked in that required a similar level of dedication.
• Tell me about a time you had to work with a highly distracted or difficult stakeholder. How did you keep the project on track?
• Describe a situation where you had to make a critical product decision with almost no data.
• How do you handle a situation where your carefully planned roadmap is entirely thrown out by leadership?

Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Preparation for Athelas requires a strategic focus on both your product acumen and your ability to operate under pressure. Interviewers are looking for candidates who can take vague concepts and immediately structure them into actionable product plans.

Product Sense and Domain Knowledge – You must demonstrate a deep understanding of the Athelas product ecosystem. Interviewers expect you to have thoroughly reviewed the company website, watched all available demo videos, and formulated strong opinions on their product positioning and user experience.

Execution and Velocity – You will be evaluated on your ability to deliver results quickly. You must show how you prioritize ruthlessly, cut through red tape, and optimize for rapid deployment. Your answers should consistently highlight how you achieve "speed above all else" in your product development lifecycle.

Navigating Ambiguity – You will frequently face questions that feel unstructured or thought of on the spot. Interviewers evaluate your ability to remain calm, ask clarifying questions, and quickly build a logical framework out of ambiguous or vague prompts.

Resilience and Work Ethic – Athelas operates with a highly demanding startup culture. Interviewers will assess your alignment with their intense working style, looking for clear evidence of high ownership, dedication, and the stamina to drive complex projects to completion.

Interview Process Overview

The interview process for a Product Manager at Athelas is rigorous, demanding, and heavily focused on practical output. You can generally expect a four-round process that moves quickly but requires a significant time investment on your part, particularly during the practical assessment phase. The evaluation is designed to simulate the actual working environment: fast-paced, ambiguous, and heavily reliant on your ability to produce comprehensive deliverables independently.

Your journey will typically begin with a recruiter phone screen, followed by a highly intensive take-home case study. If your case study meets the bar, you will move to the final rounds, which consist of back-to-back interviews with a Hiring Manager, an Engineering Manager, and a Business Stakeholder. Throughout these conversations, expect the focus to remain tightly constrained to product mechanics, system flows, and your ability to drive cross-functional execution.

The timeline above outlines the typical progression from the initial recruiter screen through the final stakeholder interviews. You should use this visual to anticipate the heavy workload required during the case study phase and to prepare for the distinct perspectives (engineering vs. business) you will face in the final rounds.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed in the Athelas interviews, you must excel in specific, highly scrutinized areas. The evaluation is less about theoretical frameworks and more about your practical ability to design, build, and ship.

The Product Case Study

The case study is often the most challenging hurdle in the Athelas interview process. It is designed to test your end-to-end product management skills in a simulated environment.

• You will typically be given a multi-part assignment (often 2 parts with up to 5 detailed questions) that requires deep solutioning.
• Strong performance means delivering a comprehensive package: detailed PRD-style documentation, wireframes or designs, logical user flows, and a concrete launch plan.
• Interviewers look for extreme attention to detail combined with a clear demonstration of how quickly you can synthesize complex requirements into a shippable product plan.

Be ready to go over:

• End-to-end solutioning – Taking a raw problem statement and delivering a full product spec.
• User flow mapping – Visually and logically documenting how a user moves through your proposed solution.
• Go-to-market strategy – Crafting realistic, aggressive launch plans.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Identifying edge cases in healthcare compliance or proposing technical architecture adjustments to support your product.

Navigating Ambiguity and On-the-Spot Problem Solving

During the live interviews, you will likely encounter questions that feel vague, ambiguous, or even thought of on the spot. This is by design, testing how you operate when you lack complete information.

• You are evaluated on your reflexes: how quickly you can structure a vague prompt into a solvable problem.
• Strong performance involves taking the reins of the conversation. Do not wait for the interviewer to clarify; instead, propose a structure, state your assumptions, and drive the answer forward.

Be ready to go over:

• Framework application – Applying structured thinking to unstructured questions.
• Assumption testing – Openly stating what you are assuming before building out your answer.
• Prioritization under pressure – Deciding what features to cut when time or resources are artificially constrained in a hypothetical scenario.

Product Deep-Dive and Domain Expertise

Interviewers, especially the Hiring Manager and Business Stakeholders, will expect you to be intimately familiar with what Athelas actually builds.

• You will be evaluated on your proactive research and your ability to critique or expand upon their existing product lines.
• Strong candidates will seamlessly reference specific Athelas features, demo videos, and market positioning during their answers.

Be ready to go over:

• Product teardowns – Analyzing an existing Athelas product and suggesting improvements.
• Competitive landscape – Understanding where Athelas sits in the broader healthcare tech market.
• Stakeholder alignment – Demonstrating how you would balance business objectives with engineering constraints when building a new feature.

Key Responsibilities

As a Product Manager at Athelas, your day-to-day reality is defined by high-velocity execution and deep cross-functional collaboration. You are the primary owner of your product's lifecycle, responsible for taking high-level business mandates and translating them into actionable engineering tasks. This requires writing highly detailed product requirements, mapping out complex user journeys, and constantly iterating based on rapid feedback loops.

You will act as the critical bridge between the engineering team and business stakeholders. On any given day, you might negotiate technical debt and sprint capacity with an Engineering Manager in the morning, and present go-to-market strategies to Business Stakeholders in the afternoon. You are expected to be hands-on, often jumping into design tools to mock up flows or digging into data to validate a product hypothesis.

Because the culture heavily prioritizes "speed above all else," a significant portion of your responsibility involves removing blockers. You will not have the luxury of long, drawn-out discovery phases. Instead, you will be expected to make rapid, informed decisions, push features to production, and iterate based on real-world usage. This requires a high degree of autonomy and the willingness to work the extensive hours necessary to meet aggressive deadlines.

Role Requirements & Qualifications

To be competitive for the Product Manager role at Athelas, you must possess a blend of hard product skills and an unyielding work ethic. The company looks for builders who can operate independently in a high-pressure environment.

• Must-have skills – Exceptional ability to write detailed product documentation (PRDs, specs). Strong proficiency in creating user flows and wireframes. Proven experience driving cross-functional alignment between engineering and business teams. A demonstrated bias for action and the ability to execute at startup speed.
• Nice-to-have skills – Previous experience in healthcare technology, revenue cycle management (RCM), or remote patient monitoring. Technical background or the ability to deeply understand software architecture.
• Experience level – Typically requires mid-to-senior level experience, with a proven track record of taking complex software products from zero to one in fast-paced startup environments.
• Soft skills – Extreme resilience, high tolerance for ambiguity, direct communication style, and the ability to manage up and across effectively.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the work-life balance like for a Product Manager at Athelas? Transparency is key during the interview process: Athelas operates in a highly demanding environment. Interviewers frequently state that employees are expected to work 10-12 hours a day, often including weekends. This is an expectation, not a choice, so you must ensure this aligns with your personal working style before proceeding.

Q: Will I receive feedback on my take-home case study? Due to the fast-paced nature of the hiring team, detailed feedback on case studies is rarely provided, even if you are rejected. You should treat the assignment as a showcase of your best work, but manage your expectations regarding post-submission critiques.

Q: How should I handle an interviewer who seems distracted or is multitasking? Candidates occasionally report interviewers typing continuously or seeming distracted during the call. Remain confident, maintain your professional composure, and continue delivering structured, high-impact answers. Treat it as a test of your focus and executive presence.

Q: What is the most important thing I can do to prepare for the onsite rounds? Spend significant time on the Athelas website. Watch every demo video available, understand their core product offerings, and be prepared to discuss them in depth with the Hiring Manager and Business Stakeholders.

Other General Tips

• Embrace the Ambiguity: If an interviewer asks a question that feels vague or thought of on the spot, do not get frustrated. Use it as an opportunity to demonstrate how you bring order to chaos by defining the parameters yourself.
• Over-Communicate in the Case Study: When completing the take-home assignment, do not just provide the final answers. Show your work, explain your assumptions, and include detailed flows and launch plans. The thoroughness of your documentation is heavily scrutinized.
• Focus on the "How" of Speed: It is not enough to say you work fast. You must be able to articulate how you achieve speed—whether through ruthless prioritization, cutting scope, or rapid prototyping—while maintaining a baseline of quality.
• Prepare for Cross-Functional Scrutiny: Remember that you will be interviewed by both Engineering Managers and Business Stakeholders. You must be able to pivot your communication style, discussing technical constraints with engineering and ROI/market impact with the business side.

Summary & Next Steps

Securing a Product Manager role at Athelas is a testament to your ability to operate at the highest levels of speed, execution, and resilience. This role offers the chance to build deeply impactful products in the healthcare space, working alongside teams that push the boundaries of what is possible within tight timeframes. The environment is intense, but for the right builder, it provides unparalleled ownership and rapid career acceleration.

As you prepare, focus heavily on familiarizing yourself with the Athelas product suite through their public demos. Practice structuring ambiguous problems on the fly, and mentally prepare for a demanding take-home case study. Remember that your interviewers are looking for a unique blend of strategic product vision and the grit required to execute 10-12 hour days when the business demands it.

The compensation data above provides a benchmark for the market and role. Use this to set your expectations and guide your negotiation strategy should you reach the offer stage, keeping in mind the high demands and impact expected of the position.

Approach your interviews with confidence and a clear demonstration of your bias for action. By aligning your preparation with their core philosophy of "speed above all else," you will position yourself as a candidate who is ready to thrive at Athelas. For further insights and community-driven preparation tools, continue exploring resources on Dataford. You have the skills to succeed—now go prove it.