VP, AI Product Management

Are you a VP of AI Product Management with experience building AI native products for SMB customers? Do you have deep hands-on experience with modern AI stack: LLMs, agent frameworks, RAG architectures, tool-use patterns, and evaluation methodologies? Do you have experience in manufacturing, supply chain, or industrial software? If so, read on. We are looking for a VP of AI Product Management to lead and orchestrate multiple innovation pods building AI-native products for the manufacturing and supply chain domain. This is not a traditional product leadership role—it's a hands-on, builder-first position for someone who thinks in agents, ships in days, and treats every product surface as an opportunity for intelligent automation. This individual will own the product vision, execution cadence, and cross-pod coordination for a portfolio of AI-powered capabilities. You'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with engineers, designers, and domain experts to deliver continuously—while also providing the strategic altitude to ensure pods are aligned, complementary, and driving measurable business outcomes. WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING:Strategic Leadership & Pod Orchestration • Define and evolve the AI product vision across the manufacturing portfolio, ensuring each innovation pod has a clear charter, measurable objectives, and a shared understanding of how its work contributes to the whole. • Coordinate cross-pod dependencies, shared platform capabilities, and sequencing decisions so that pods move fast independently without duplicating effort or creating integration debt. • Establish and maintain the operating rhythm: progress reviews, demo days, portfolio-level retrospectives, and investment rebalancing. • Make portfolio-level tradeoff decisions—deciding where to double down, where to sunset, and where to spin up new pods based on customer signal and market trajectory. Agent-First Product Thinking • Frame every product capability in terms of skills and tasks that AI agents can perform—not just screens and workflows for humans. • Drive the team to think beyond copilots and chat interfaces toward autonomous agents that can observe, reason, plan, and act within our customers' environments. • Continuously evaluate emerging AI models, frameworks, and tooling; bring a practitioner's perspective to build-vs-integrate decisions. Hands-On Building & Rapid Delivery • Work alongside engineers and designers in the build process—not as a spec-writer but as a collaborator who shapes solutions in real time. • Set and model a pace of days, not weeks. Champion continuous deployment, fast experimentation, and tight customer feedback loops. • Ensure every pod maintains a bias toward shipping—getting capabilities into customers' hands early and iterating based on real-world signal. Customer & Market Engagement • Spend meaningful time with customers in their environments—on factory floors, in warehouses, at planning desks—to deeply understand workflows, pain points, and unmet needs. • Translate customer problems into AI-native solutions; resist the temptation to simply digitize manual processes. • Articulate complex AI capabilities, product direction, and technical tradeoffs to a broad audience of customers, partners, investors, and internal stakeholders. Team Development & Culture • Recruit, mentor, and develop a team of product managers who are technically curious, customer-obsessed, and comfortable operating with high autonomy. • Build a culture where PMs think in problems (not features), ship fast, learn publicly, and help each other level up. • Coach PMs and cross-functional partners to develop their own product judgment rather than relying on top-down direction. WHAT YOU NEED: • 10+ years in product management with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role (Director+ or VP) overseeing multiple product teams or pods. • Demonstrated experience building and shipping AI/ML-powered products—not just managing roadmaps that include AI features. • Deep hands-on familiarity with modern AI stack: LLMs, agent frameworks, RAG architectures, tool-use patterns, and evaluation methodologies. • Track record of operating at startup speed: continuous deployment, tight iteration cycles, and direct customer feedback integration. • Experience in manufacturing, supply chain, industrial software, or adjacent domains (or demonstrated ability to ramp quickly into complex domains). • Proven ability to recruit, develop, and retain high-performing PM talent. • Experience building products for SMB. • Experience building agentic AI systems (not just chat/copilot interfaces). • Background in B2B or enterprise SaaS with complex multi-stakeholder environments. • Familiarity with manufacturing systems: ERP, MES, PLM, inventory management, quality management, or shop-floor automation. • Technical degree or equivalent hands-on technical experience (CS, engineering, or similar). • Experience operating in a portfolio company or multi-product environment where coordination across a