AI Labs Principal Product Leader

Praxis, Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 170,000 - 243,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

Life Insurance

Disability Insurance

401(k) match

RSU grant

Career development

Job summary

Paylocity is seeking a Principal Group Product Manager to lead the AI Labs incubation team, reporting to the Chief Innovation Officer. You will shape the portfolio, define experiments, and drive evidence-based decisions while guiding a growing, multidisciplinary team.

You will partner with Product, Engineering, UX, Data, Security, Legal, and GTM groups to implement an AI-enabled PDLC, accelerate discovery, and transition successful experiments into durable product squads.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of experience in product management, innovation, product strategy, venture building, or a related field, including 3+ years in a senior leadership role within a fast-paced, technology-driven environment.
• Direct experience in an incubator, innovation lab, venture studio, zero-to-one product team, or similar high-ambiguity environment.
• Direct experience operating within an AI-driven PDLC; experience helping design, implement, or scale an AI-enabled product development model is strongly preferred.
• Proven ability to take ambiguous problems from framing through experimentation, validation, and a clear investment recommendation.

Responsibilities

• Co-Create and lead the vision, strategy, and operating model for AI Labs, connecting experimentation to Paylocity’s broader product, platform, and AI strategy.
• Build a portfolio of high-potential AI opportunities informed by customer needs, market shifts, business priorities, technical feasibility, and responsible-AI considerations.
• Design a disciplined incubation process that moves concepts through problem validation, rapid prototyping, customer testing, measurable experiments, investment decisions, and transition or closure.
• Personally lead early discovery and experimentation while establishing the case, structure, and talent plan for the team to grow over time.
• Establish clear learning goals, hypotheses, success measures, decision gates, and evidence standards so the organization can invest, pivot, scale, or stop with confidence.
• Operate across multiple levels of the organization, from executive leadership to individual contributors, to align stakeholders, remove barriers, and create sponsorship for experiments.
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, UX, Data, Architecture, Security, Privacy, Legal, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Service, and Customer Success to test ideas responsibly and accelerate learning.
• Create strong pathways for successful experiments to transition into durable product teams, including a clear product narrative, validated customer value, technical context, risks, metrics, and recommended ownership.
• Help define and evolve an AI-driven PDLC, embedding practical AI use across product discovery, research synthesis, prototyping, requirements, engineering, quality, instrumentation, launch, and iteration.
• Identify where AI can improve the speed, quality, and learning velocity of product development while maintaining appropriate human judgment, security, privacy, governance, and quality controls.
• Use customer feedback, product data, market intelligence, and experiment results to communicate what was learned and recommend next actions.
• Make complex opportunities tangible through prototypes, narratives, demos, business cases, and concise executive communication.
• Build reusable methods, tools, templates, and playbooks that strengthen experimentation and AI-enabled product development across the broader organization.
• Foster a culture of curiosity, urgency, constructive challenge, and continuous learning, where teams are rewarded for evidence and outcomes rather than activity.
• As the team grows, recruit, lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing, multidisciplinary group capable of moving between exploration and execution.
• Create mechanisms, systems, processes, and leadership practices that reinforce Paylocity values throughout the work.

Skills

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Strategic thinking

AI product patterns

Education

Bachelor’s degree or higher in related field

Equivalent practical experience

Job description

Paylocity is seeking a Principal Group Product Manager to lead the AI Labs incubation team, reporting to the Chief Innovation Officer. You will shape the portfolio, define experiments, and drive evidence-based decisions while guiding a growing, multidisciplinary team.

You will partner with Product, Engineering, UX, Data, Security, Legal, and GTM groups to implement an AI-enabled PDLC, accelerate discovery, and transition successful experiments into durable product squads.