Forward Deployed AI Product Manager

Talkdesk; United States; Remote; USD 200,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Paid Time Off

Paid Holidays

Paid Sick Leave

Job summary

Talkdesk is seeking a Forward Deployed AI Product Manager to bridge client needs and engineering delivery. You’ll embed with retailers, e-commerce brands, and hospitality operators to translate workflows into AI-powered solutions that ship.

This is a hybrid of product, implementation consulting, and pre/post-sales engineering. You’ll own discovery, design, and deployment from pilot to production, defining success metrics and ensuring privacy/compliance while traveling 25–35% to client sites as

Qualifications

• 5+ years in retail, e-commerce, or hospitality with operations exposure.
• Experience in client-facing delivery roles (implementation, consulting, customer success) where outcomes were owned.
• Ability to map complex guest and shopper journeys into structured requirements.
• Strong communication skills for VP/C-suite stakeholders and technical teams.
• Familiarity with TCPA, PCI DSS, GDPR/CCPA and brand guidelines.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and driving action.
• Interest in AI and automation within conversational guest/retail experiences.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary product point of contact for a portfolio of clients and stakeholders.
• Lead discovery engagements to surface automation opportunities and needs.
• Translate workflows into product/configuration requirements for engineering.
• Own end-to-end deployments from pilot to go-live and manage testing paths.
• Define KPIs and ensure measurable business value for clients.
• Collaborate with legal, privacy, and security teams to clear compliance gates.

Skills

Client delivery ownership

Workflow mapping

Executive communication

Regulatory & data familiarity

AI curiosity

Travel readiness

Job description

We are hiring a Forward Deployed AI Product Manager (FDPM) to be the connective tissue between our clients and our engineering teams. This is not a traditional PM role. You will live at the intersection of product strategy, technical delivery, and client partnership—spending meaningful time embedded with global retailers, e-commerce brands, hotel chains, and restaurant operators to deeply understand their workflows, then translating those insights into AI-powered solutions that ship. Think of this as: part Product Manager, part Implementation Consultant, part Pre/Post-Sales Engineer. Whether you have run operations inside a retailer, hotel group, or restaurant brand, implemented enterprise software at an e-commerce, POS, PMS, or loyalty vendor, or advised retail and hospitality clients as a consultant—if you have felt the pull toward product and AI, this role was built for you.

What You'll Do: Client Engagement & Discovery

• Trusted Advisory: Serve as the primary Product point of contact for a portfolio of retail, e-commerce, and hospitality clients, owning relationships across contact center operations, guest experience, digital commerce, IT, and store operations stakeholders, often working alongside C-suite sponsors.
• Workflow Observation: Lead structured discovery engagements—interviews, order journey mapping, queue observation, side-by-sides with agents, and document analysis—to surface automation opportunities and unmet guest, shopper, or operational needs.
• The "Art of the Possible": Connect client operational pain points to Talkdesk AI platform capabilities—while respecting brand voice, consumer privacy, and PCI constraints.

Solution Design & Scoping

• Scope Alignment: Review pre-sales Statements of Work drafted by the Solution Architect to confirm scope, feasibility, and design alignment before signature.
• Workflow Translation: Translate real-world workflows—WISMO (Where Is My Order?), returns, exchanges, loyalty/rewards inquiries, reservation bookings, cancellations, check-in flows, and VIP guest routing—into structured product and configuration requirements with FDEs, Applied ML, and Solution Engineers.
• Specification Ownership: Own the quality and completeness of Autopilot design and specification documents for engineering handoffs, including required brand disclosures, payment verification steps, TCPA consent capture, and agent escalation criteria.
• Success Metrics Definition: Define business KPIs with clients (time-to-value, containment/call deflection, self-service completion rate, first-contact resolution, CSAT/NPS, average handle time, order modification cycle time, cost per contact).
• Scope Discipline: Enforce scope discipline during UAT—route out-of-scope requests to the Sales/Account team to follow formal change order processes.
• 0-to-1 Executions: Own deployments end-to-end (from pilot kickoff through go-live): manage timelines, stakeholder communication, change management, and the iteration cycle to production-ready deployments.
• Validation & Testing: Generate test criteria from build artifacts and conduct manual validation (e.g., live call testing, messaging flow validation, authentication paths) before approving client UAT.
• Compliance & Security: Partner with client legal, privacy, and security teams to clear control requirements (PCI DSS, TCPA, GDPR/CCPA) gating go-live.
• On-Site Go-Live: Drive client UAT to completion efficiently, including on-site travel for strategic accounts to accelerate testing and fine-tuning.
• Post-Launch Observability: Monitor deployed Autopilots post-launch using observability tooling, evaluating performance and resolving field issues.
• Value Handoff: Ensure clients and Customer Experience Managers (CXMs) can successfully measure business success metrics before handing off ongoing account management.
• ROI Narratives: Document ROI proof points and case-for-scale narratives at go-live to empower CXMs to drive expansion and renewal.

Product Feedback & Roadmap Influence

• Field Insights: Surface reusable patterns and high-priority gaps from retail/hospitality field deployments to the core product roadmap, partnering with engineering and product leadership.
• Scale the Practice: Contribute to internal knowledge bases, playbooks, and templates that systematize the FDPM practice as Talkdesk scales.

Required Qualifications

• Industry Context: 5+ years of experience in retail, e-commerce, or hospitality, with hands-on exposure to customer-facing or back-office operations in one or more domains: Retail & E-Commerce Servicing (orders, returns, exchanges, promotions, loyalty), Hospitality Operations (reservations, guest relations, front desk, concierge), or Restaurant Operations (ordering, delivery support, table management).
• Client Delivery Ownership: Demonstrated experience in a client-facing delivery role—implementation, technical project management, solution consulting, or customer success—where you owned outcomes, not just activities.
• Workflow Mapping: Ability to quickly understand and map complex guest and shopper journeys, then distill them into structured requirements and prioritized problem statements.
• Executive Communication: Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to present to VP/C-suite stakeholders and translate between store/guest operations and technical teams.
• Regulatory & Data Familiarity: Working familiarity with TCPA outbound contact rules, PCI DSS payment handling, consumer data privacy regulations (CCPA, GDPR), and brand compliance guidelines.
• Comfort with Ambiguity: Comfortable operating in whitespace; you default to action and bring structure to uncertainty.
• AI & Agentic Curiosity: Experience with agentic workflows and a strong curiosity about AI and automation; eager to develop deep product fluency in conversational AI for guest and retail experiences.
• Travel: Willingness to travel up to 25-35% to client sites for discovery, UAT, go-live support, and executive meetings.

Preferred Qualifications

• Vendor Experience: Experience at a retail, e-commerce, OMS, POS, PMS, or loyalty technology vendor in a Project Manager, Implementation Consultant, Technical Services, or similar role.
• High-Growth Expertise: Prior experience in a startup or high-growth technology company in a PM, solutions engineering, or FDE-adjacent capacity.
• Contact Center Ecosystems: Familiarity with CCaaS, IVR, or conversational AI, with prior exposure to platforms such as Talkdesk, Genesys, Five9, or similar.
• Integrations & Standards: Understanding of APIs and integrations with retail/hospitality platforms—Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Magento, SAP, Oracle Commerce, Workday, Opera PMS, Sabre, Amadeus, or major loyalty and POS systems.
• Agile Product Delivery: Experience building or contributing to product roadmaps, writing PRDs, or working in Agile/scrum delivery processes.

Pay Range (Base Pay): $200,000 - $240,000

Other Types of Pay:Based on level and role the employee may be eligible for long term incentives in the form of equity and short term incentives of either bonus or commission.

Health Insurance:Medical, Dental, Vision, Life and Disability Insurance, Employee Assistance Program (EAP).

Paid Time Off: Talkdesk offers an uncapped paid time off program for exempt employees and an accrual-based program for non-exempt employees; both are subject to manager approval and consistent with business needs.

Paid Holidays: Talkdesk offers 14 paid holidays each year.

Paid Sick Leave: Exempt employees have uncapped paid time off and non-exempt sick leave follows accrual standards; both are subject to manager approval and consistent with business needs.

Benefits and perks listed above may vary based on the nature of your employment with Talkdesk.

All questions or concerns about this posting should be directed to the Talent team at [e-mail] .

Talkdesk is pioneering a new era of Customer Experience Automation (CXA), redefining how the worlds most admired brands interact with their customers through AI. Our global team of courageous innovators is customer-obsessed, building AI-first solutions that put empathy, trust, and transparency at the center of every interaction. We foster an inclusive culture where diverse perspectives drive our success and every voice belongs. Combining the stability of a global leader with the agility of a disruptor, Talkdeskers are empowered with the autonomy to drive meaningful impact, while giving back to the communities and environment around us.

Talkdesk has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and in the G2 Overall Grid Reports for AI Agents and Contact Center. With seven consecutive years on the Forbes Cloud 100 and multiple AI Breakthrough awards, there has never been a more exciting time to join us as we shape the future of customer experience automation!

Work Environment and Physical Requirements

Primarily office-environment work, extended periods of sitting or standing, computer-based work. Limited lifting, and equipment usage limited to computer-related equipment (keyboards, mouse, etc.)

The Talkdesk story hinges on empathy and acceptance. It is the shared goal among all Talkdeskers to empower a new kind of customer hero through our innovative software solution, and we firmly believe that the best path to success for our mission is inclusivity, diversity, and genuine acceptance. To that end, we will hire, promote, work along, cheer for, bond with, and warmly welcome into the Talkdesk family all persons without regard to ethnic and racial identity, indigenous heritage, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status.

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