AI Product Leader

DEPARTMENT Product

LOCATION Minneapolis, MN (Hybrid)

TYPE Full time

REPORTS TO Head of Product

THE ROLE

The AI Product Leader sits at the intersection of product delivery, engagement leadership, and applied AI strategy. In practice it looks like: ~40% product delivery, ~40% client leadership, ~20% AI strategy. You will lead 2–3 concurrent engagements and be accountable for shipping, adoption, and measurable impact.

WHAT YOU GET TO DO

1) Product delivery and execution

• Own backlogs, prioritization, and sprint execution across 2–3 engagements.

• Run standups, planning, retros, and cross-team coordination with engineering/design/data.

• Write crisp user stories and acceptance criteria; make trade-offs under real constraints.

• Ensure production readiness: security, compliance, data governance, deployment, and operational runbooks.

• Drive post-launch iteration using user feedback, telemetry, and KPI performance.
  
  

2) Client and engagement leadership

• Lead client working sessions and check-ins; steer decision-making with exec and practitioner stakeholders.

• Translate ambiguity into clear plans, milestones, and measurable outcomes.

• Own delivery health: scope, risks, dependencies, and expectation management.

• Partner with the engagement lead/account team on renewals/expansions and executive readouts (no hard sales quota).
  
  

3) Applied AI strategy (GenAI-heavy)

• Help clients choose the right approach: workflow redesign, retrieval, tool use, evaluation strategy, rollout.

• Design evaluation and measurement: rubrics, golden datasets, offline/online testing, and monitoring plans.

• Make practical architecture-level recommendations with engineers (you don’t have to be the architect).

• Stay current on model capabilities/limits and translate that into realistic product decisions.
  
  

WHAT WILL HELP YOU SUCCEED

• You have shipped software to production and can point to what you built, what changed, and how it performed.

• You can run delivery: budget, backlog, sprints, trade-offs, and stakeholder alignment (without hiding behind process).

• You are fluent in modern GenAI patterns (prompting, RAG basics, evaluation, iteration) and have hands-on experience using tools to build prototypes or workflows.

• You thrive in ambiguity: starting with incomplete requirements, making decisions with imperfect information, and adapting as you learn.
  
  

What we’ll accept as equivalent

• Client leadership can be external clients or internal “enterprise clients” where you owned budget, outcomes, timelines, and executive stakeholders.

• Experience with AI-powered low-code platforms (V0, Bolt, Lovable) for rapid prototyping and stakeholder demos

• AI experience can be GenAI product work or adjacent data/ML product work plus clear hands-on GenAI experimentation in the last 12 months.
  

Required

• AI/GenAI Product Manager who has also led enterprise delivery and exec stakeholders.

• Engagement Manager/Delivery Lead from a SaaS/AI product company who has shipped software and can do product thinking.

• Senior Product Owner/TPM with strong stakeholder leadership plus clear GenAI build/eval work.

Nice to have

• Evaluation harnesses, red-team testing, or model monitoring in production.

• Regulated environments (healthcare/finance/insurance) and security/compliance constraints.

• Change management: rollout, enablement, adoption metrics.
  Professional services experience, especially fixed-price or outcome-based delivery.
  

Not a fit if

• You only want strategy work and don’t want to own shipping, iteration, and operational realities.

• You prefer low-ambiguity roles with highly mature processes or narrow ownership.

• You want people management or practice leadership right now.

• You are remote-only and not able to travel to MSP regularly.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

Competitive base salary with a revenue-based variable comp structure — when the company wins, you win. We offer comprehensive health coverage, 401(k) with match, flexible time off, flexible work arrangements, and support for professional development.

ABOUT BLANK METAL

Blank Metal is an AI-native engineering company that partners with enterprises to deliver production AI fast. We blend strategic insight with hands-on execution, shipping high-impact systems that turn AI initiatives into measurable business results.

We’re builders, not theorists. Our team of seasoned engineers, designers, and strategists work across industries to create AI applications that actually get used and make a difference.