AI Product Lead

Praxis, Inc.; Durham (NC); On-site; USD 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Praxis, Inc. is seeking a versatile Builder who pairs strong product thinking with hands-on creation across multiple ventures.

As a core member of our studio, you’ll work with founders and teammates to bring ideas to life using AI-driven product development to deepen human connection, relationships, and community. Your work centers on deciding what to build for whom, leading discovery and validation, prototyping with AI tools, and shipping with our Kathmandu-based AI engineering team.

Qualifications

• Redemptive imagination: you apply your faith to lament what's broken in the world, discern the right solutions, and imagine how to design them, often counter-culturally. You think about theology, culture, and psychology as much as the latest model release
• A track record of running discovery and validation in early-stage settings, with hands-on skill prototyping and shipping using modern AI-driven development tools
• Excellent collaboration across cultures and time zones with founders, studio partners, and our Nepal-based engineers, and a passion for technology that strengthens rather than replaces human connection

Responsibilities

• Run continuous discovery across our ventures: weekly customer conversations, discovery calls with the right people, synthesizing what you hear into hypotheses and test cards, and running fast, inexpensive experiments with AI compressing every step
• Recruit design partners and build in the wild, shaping real products with and alongside the actual people we're building for
• Prototype and ship with AI-driven development tools, working day to day with founders and with our AI engineering team in Kathmandu, Nepal

Job description

The Opportunity

We're seeking a versatile Builder who combines strong product thinking with hands-on creation capabilities. As a core member of our studio team, you'll work across multiple ventures, partnering with our founders and studio teammates to bring ideas to life, using the latest AI-driven product development to deepen human connection, relationships, and community.

Here's the shift we're hiring for: AI has collapsed the cost and time of building software, so shipping is no longer the bottleneck. The hard question now is not how to build, but what to build, and for whom. This role exists to answer that question with rigor, venture after venture.

What You'll Do

Hands-on product development. Leading product development in a hands-on way is table stakes with today's AI tools, but what sets this role apart is also leading the studio's discovery and validation engine: the disciplined process of figuring out which product, for which market segment, before we commit to a build.

• Run continuous discovery across our ventures: weekly customer conversations, discovery calls with the right people, synthesizing what you hear into hypotheses and test cards, and running fast, inexpensive experiments with AI compressing every step
• Recruit design partners and build in the wild, shaping real products with and alongside the actual people we're building for
• Prototype and ship with AI-driven development tools, working day to day with founders and with our AI engineering team in Kathmandu, Nepal

How We Build

We're a studio of 10 including two build teams. You will lead one of them. Each build team typically carries a primary and a secondary venture week to week, which keeps the work varied without drowning anyone. We build, fund, and launch three ventures a year in partnership with founders. Some are the founders' ideas; others we generate internally and find the right founder for. We stay with each venture through its first year, so at any given moment we have about four in motion.

Our approach draws on:

• Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres: a sustainable weekly cadence of customer conversations and assumption testing, not one-off upfront research
• Testing Business Ideas from Strategyzer: rapid experiments that de-risk desirability, viability, and feasibility
• AI throughout, compressing discovery, synthesis, and validation from months to weeks

What We're Looking For

Your title may have been product manager, product lead, or founder. What matters is that you're an evidence-driven builder, fluent in creating with AI and even more committed to discovering what deserves to be created. Studio experience isn't required, but it's a definite asset.

• Redemptive imagination: you apply your faith to lament what's broken in the world, discern the right solutions, and imagine how to design them, often counter-culturally. You think about theology, culture, and psychology as much as the latest model release
• A track record of running discovery and validation in early-stage settings, with hands-on skill prototyping and shipping using modern AI-driven development tools
• Excellent collaboration across cultures and time zones with founders, studio partners, and our Nepal-based engineers, and a passion for technology that strengthens rather than replaces human connection

Why Join Us

AI will either erode our capacity for genuine relationship or help spark a renaissance of it. In partnership with Praxis, we practice redemptive entrepreneurship: building ventures designed to renew and restore, not merely avoid harm.

• Help us use, grow, and mature a redemptive imagination through AI products that strengthen human connection, relationships, and community
• Shape three new ventures a year from concept to launch, alongside visionary founders tackling real human problems
• Join a team pursuing both commercial success and redemptive impact, with an optional trip to Kathmandu to spend time with our engineering team, where our roots run deep through CloudFactory

Location

This role is based in Durham, NC. We're looking for someone already in the Triangle or excited to relocate here.

We're currently building our first three ventures, with many more to go. Join us now and you'll help shape not just these ventures but the studio itself in a profound way. We look forward to meeting you.