Product Lead

Publicis Groupe Holdings B.V; Toronto; On-site; CAD 140,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading global communications group in Toronto seeks a Product Lead to define and drive the product roadmap for AI tools. The successful candidate will manage a team of Product Managers and work collaboratively across departments to shape product development. Essential qualifications include significant experience in product management, leadership skills, and a solid understanding of AI/ML concepts. This role offers a competitive salary package and a focus on diversity and inclusion.

Qualifications

• 6–10+ years of experience in product management or ownership.
• 4+ years of experience with AI/ML or data-driven products.
• Experience writing clear user stories and acceptance criteria.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a team of Product Managers.
• Define and communicate the product strategy across multiple product lines.
• Own and define the product backlog, ensuring all user stories are aligned.

Skills

Experience in product management

Familiarity with AI/ML concepts

Leadership skills

Agile methodology experience

Analytical skills

Job description

Company description

Publicis Groupe Canada is the Canadian subsidiary of Publicis Groupe, the second largest communications group in the world and a global leader concentrated within four main activities: Communication, Media, Data and Technology. Publicis Groupe Canada represents the vision of a set of collaborative and integrated agencies that offer expertise and insightful services to many of the biggest brands in North America.

Publicis Groupe Canada is committed to its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mandate which focuses on four pillars: Education, Talent Management, Outreach and Giving Back. Since the mandate's launch in 2020, they have made strong and continued growth in all their pillars including top-tier mental health benefits, regular education sessions for employees, six business resources groups for employees of various backgrounds and their allies and developing training and scholarships programs with POV and the Miami Ad School Canada. The Groupe also launched This Is The Job, an initiative designed to work with Canada's largest school boards to change the complexion of the marketing industry and inspire racialized teens and young adults to consider a career in the industry.

Canadian brands include: Publicis Canada (Publicis Canada, Hawkeye, Razorfish, Publicis Health, ThePubProductions, Nurun, Publicis Sports & Entertainment), Publicis Media (Starcom, Spark Foundry, Zenith), Leo Burnett (Leo Burnett Canada, Ove Brand Design, Leo Burnett Design), Saatchi & Saatchi (Saatchi & Saatchi Canada, Synergize, TPM), MSL Canada/North Strategic (North Strategic, MSL Canada, Notch Canada) and Publicis Sapient.

Overview

The Product Lead will define and drive the roadmap and execution of a product composed of intelligent micro‑services, data pipelines, media processing workflows, and interconnected APIs. This role is responsible for translating business goals and user needs into clear, actionable product direction, ensuring our AI tools deliver measurable value to teams and clients.

You will work closely with Technology, Delivery, Data/ML, Design, our executive team and external partners to shape what gets built, why it matters, and how it drives outcomes. You’ll ensure the product evolves with a strong point of view and a consistently high bar for quality, usability, and performance.

What Success Looks Like (First 6 Months)

• A clear and validated product that aligns with business goals and internal user needs.
• A well‑organized backlog and roadmap that provide structure to all build work‑streams.
• Strong collaboration rhythms in place with Technology, Delivery, and executive stakeholders.
• Early features released with measurable value demonstrating user adoption, improved workflow efficiency, or media/data quality gains.
• Continuous feedback loops established, informing future releases and enabling rapid iteration.

Responsibilities

Team Leadership & People Management

• Lead and manage a team of Product Managers, providing mentorship, guidance, and performance feedback.
• Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement within the product organization.

Product Vision & Strategy

• Define and communicate the product strategy across multiple product lines.
• Build and maintain a long‑term roadmap that sequences feature development across agents, data systems, media tools, and integration layers, while ensuring alignment of priorities across product teams to deliver cohesive solutions.
• Partner with business stakeholders to define requirements and translate complex workflows, media ingestion, data processing, agent logic, analytics into clear requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Establish success metrics, KPIs, and measurement frameworks that track product performance, user value, and business impact.

Backlog Ownership & Requirements

• Own and define the product backlog, ensuring all user stories are clear, prioritized, and aligned to the product strategy.
• Translate complex technical workflows: data ingestion, agent orchestration, media processing, analytics into actionable requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Continuously balance feature scope, usability, technical feasibility, and business impact for high‑value outcomes.
• Define release goals/intentions, manage trade‑offs, and ensure backlog readiness to support an iterative and dependable delivery.

Cross‑Functional Collaboration

• Partner with the Technology & Data leads to validate feasibility, trade‑offs, sequencing, and architectural fit.
• Support team members through clear guidance, regular check‑ins, and proactive removal of roadblocks to maintain momentum and quality delivery.
• Work with the Delivery Lead to establish delivery plans, sprint commitments, and release readiness.
• Collaborate with design to ensure the platform is intuitive, accessible, and user‑centric across all components.
• Support data team & technology lead in translating business goals to data modelling and transformation requirements.
• Participate in hiring efforts for Product Owners, Business Analysts and CSMs as the team scales.

User & Stakeholder Engagement

• Conduct deep user discovery through interviews, pilots, feedback loops, live tests, and analytics.
• Communicate product vision, and any applicable trade‑offs, and rationale regularly to internal and external (client) stakeholders.
• Manage expectations and provide frequent, clear updates on progress, risks, and impacts.
• Build strong relationships with end‑users to ensure the product aligns with their real‑world use cases and workflows.

Quality, Validation & Continuous Improvement

• Validate features through structured testing, user acceptance, and performance checks ensuring outputs meet functional and quality and AI‑specific reliability standards.
• Coordinate with technology lead to prioritize technical debt, scalability, and workflow improvements as part of the ongoing roadmap.
• Establish feedback loops, integrating production learnings back into product and engineering as well as ML workflows.

Qualifications

• 6–10+ years of experience in product management or ownership, ideally with AI, data, or platform products.
• 4+ years of experience with AI/ML or data‑driven products.
• Proven experience managing and developing high‑performing product teams.
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to inspire, coach, and influence across multiple stakeholders.
• Strong understanding of AI/ML concepts (LLMs, RAG, agents, data pipelines) and how they translate into real user value.
• Demonstrated experience operating within Agile frameworks (Scrum or Kanban) including backlog prioritization, sprint planning, and close collaboration with a cross‑functional development team.
• Comfortable discussing data flows, APIs, integrations and AI systems high‑level.
• Strong ability managing ambiguity, complexity and competing priorities.
• Experience writing clear, detailed user stories and acceptance criteria for complex technical systems.
• Strong analytical and communication skills, able to present clearly across technical and business audiences.
• Hands‑on experience with agile methodologies, backlog management, and cross‑functional delivery.
• Familiarity with user research, product analytics, and data‑informed decision‑making.
• You can tackle anything thrown your way. You are excited by figuring out things they’ve never done before. You do not have “that’s not my job” in your vocabulary.

Additional information

Transparency matters to us. The salary range for this position is CAD $140,000 - CAD $160,000 per year. Actual compensation within this range will be based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and applicable certifications. This range reflects what we reasonably expect to offer based on current market data.

AI Use

We use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of our hiring process, such as reviewing applications or analyzing resumes. These tools assist our recruitment team but never replace human decision‑making. We believe in a human‑first approach, where your experience and potential are recognized by people.

Publicis Canada is committed to building a diverse workforce representative of our community. We encourage and are pleased to consider all qualified candidates, without regard to race, colour, citizenship, religion, sex, marital / family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, aboriginal status, age, disability or persons who may require an accommodation. If you require a specific accommodation please contact Human Resources at 416‑925‑7733 or by email [e-mail].