Intern Pickleball Instructor Jobs in Chicago, IL

About Sweatpals

Sweatpals is the community-first fitness platform turning workouts into social experiences. Backed by a16z speedrun, Patron, Kevin Hart, Pear VC, and founders of Instacart and Dreamworks Animations, we connect hundreds of thousands of "pals," hosts, and gyms through events, memberships, and social features. We're still scrappy at heart, but scaling fast.

We believe working out should be joyful, social, and inclusive, not just a solo grind. From run clubs and beach pilates to pickleball leagues and cold plunge socials, Sweatpals turns everyday workouts into meaningful social experiences.

Sweatpals also gives local leaders the tools to grow their fitness communities from side hustles to full-time, even million-dollar businesses. Hosts use our platform to run their business, from ticketing and memberships to marketing tools.

We're an AI-forward company. If you're excited about building real products for real communities at the intersection of technology and human connection, you'll fit right in.

The Role

We're bringing on a PM intern to support the Host Squad product team during a high-velocity summer. The Host Squad owns the core product experience for fitness and wellness professionals - the community hosts, gym and studio owners, and instructors and who run their business on Sweatpals. Think ticketing, memberships, scheduling, co-hosting, campaigns, and the analytics that help hosts grow.

This is a hands-on PM role - not a research or ops role. You'll work directly with a Senior Product Manager and own specific deliverables end-to-end, collaborating daily with Engineering, Design, and QA across areas like core flow quality, backlog prioritization, and product strategy.

Responsibilities

1. Core Product Ownership

Get deep into the most critical parts of our host product - the flows and features that drive revenue, retention, and day-to-day operations for fitness professionals. You'll identify what could be better, what's broken, then own driving improvements from idea to shipped.

• Dig into high-impact areas including experience/appointment creation, ticket transfers, co-hosting, and beyond
• Identify gaps, edge cases, and failure states with a structured, user-centered lens
• Propose and prioritize improvements, then partner with engineering and design to execute them
• Where scope allows, own new feature work end-to-end - from problem definition and spec to launch

2. Product Strategy & Analytics Projects

Take ownership of discrete research and strategy work streams:

• Define and drive analytics for recently launched features - identify what to measure, work with engineering to ensure tracking is in place, and synthesize early signal into actionable takeaways
• Own a competitive analysis workstream for growth-adjacent features (referrals, PLG, network effects) and synthesize findings into clear product recommendations
• Data analysis and synthesis to support roadmap decisions
• Where relevant, contribute to 0-to-1 discovery work for upcoming features - user research synthesis, problem framing, or lightweight spec writing

3. Backlog Triage & Prioritization Support

Help bring order to a complex backlog:

• Develop and apply a bug priority rubric for revenue-generating and operations-critical workflows
• Maintain backlog health: consolidate duplicates, triage stale items, and ensure active issues have the right context, owners, and priorities
• Support roadmap sequencing discussions by helping surface tradeoffs, dependencies, and effort/impact signals

What We're Looking For

• Currently enrolled in an MBA, master's, or other graduate program - or a strong undergraduate candidate with relevant experience
• Prior experience in product management, engineering, or a fast-moving startup role is highly preferred
• Strong product instincts: you think