Forward Deployed Product Manager

Roko Labs; New York (NY); On-site; USD 110,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Roko Labs in New York City seeks a Forward Deployed Product Manager to joi n our team. You’ll be embedded in client engagements, owning the product journey from discovery to delivery, working with engineers, designers, and AI specialists to define what to build and how success is measured.

This in-office role requires 3–5 years of PM experience, an ability to navigate ambiguity, and strong communication with senior stakeholders. Equity is part of the compensation package.

Qualifications

• 3–5 years of Product Management delivering digital products from discovery through launch.
• Experience with client-facing engagements and cross-functional teams.
• Fluency with modern AI tools and practical product applications.

Responsibilities

• Lead product discovery and define strategy for client engagements.
• Own roadmaps, success metrics, and delivery plans across assignments.
• Collaborate with Engineering, Design, Data, and AI teams to drive outcomes.
• Define AI-enabled capabilities and manage tradeoffs in delivery.

Skills

PM experience

AI literacy

Communication

Agile

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Claude

ChatGPT

Cursor

Job description

United States Roles

Forward Deployed Product Manager

New York City | $110,000–$130,000 + Equity

This is an in-office role based at our New York City office. Fully remote and hybrid arrangements are not available for this position.

About Roko Labs

Roko Labs is a product and technology company that partners with Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startups to build and scale ambitious digital products. We work across product strategy, software engineering, design, AI, and emerging technology. Our team is global, entrepreneurial, and highly execution-oriented.

The Role

Our clients come to us with ambitious challenges — modernize an enterprise platform, build an AI-powered product, automate a broken workflow, or create a digital experience that actually drives business results. Your job is to turn those challenges into products that deliver real impact.

As a Forward Deployed Product Manager, you will be embedded directly in client engagements, owning the product journey from discovery through delivery. You will work alongside clients, engineers, designers, and AI specialists to define what to build, why it matters, and how success is measured.

This is not an internal product role. You will operate in the field — in client environments, in ambiguous situations, and often without a clear playbook. One week you might be running a discovery workshop with a C-suite stakeholder. The next, you could be defining an AI-enabled feature, triaging scope under delivery pressure, or redesigning a roadmap in response to new information. That variation is a feature, not a bug.

We care much more about how quickly you learn, the quality of your decisions under pressure, and your ability to make things happen than how many years of PM experience you have.

Who We're Looking For

You're probably 3–5 years into your career and looking for significantly more ownership than a traditional PM role provides. You should be based in or willing to relocate to New York City, as this role requires working from our office 2-3 days weekly.

You may have come from a product company, a consulting firm, a startup, a digital agency, or somewhere else fast-moving. What matters more is that you are:

• AI-native. You actively use tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and other AI platforms to do your work — research, analysis, documentation, communication, prototyping. You are not just familiar with AI; you use it every day to think faster and work better.
• High-agency. When you encounter something you don't know how to do, your instinct is to figure it out. You don't wait for detailed instructions before you start moving.
• Entrepreneurial. You see product opportunities and act on them. You take initiative without being asked.
• A strong communicator. You can take a complicated technical or business problem and make it clear, sharp, and actionable — in writing, in a room, and in front of senior stakeholders.
• Comfortable with ambiguity. You don't need a mature process or a fully scoped brief before you can start making progress.
• Hungry for ownership. You'd rather be responsible for an outcome than responsible for completing assigned tasks.
• Curious about technology. You want to understand AI, software, data, and how these things create real business value — not just manage a backlog.

Bachelors degree is required. An advanced degree is welcomed but evidence that you've shipped products, navigated complex stakeholder situations, and delivered real outcomes matters much more.

What You'll Own

Product Strategy & Discovery

• Lead product discovery through client research, business analysis, and market insight to define product strategy and validate opportunities.
• Own product vision, roadmaps, and success metrics across one or more client engagements.
• Translate complex business challenges into product strategies, MVPs, and actionable delivery plans.
• Identify where AI, automation, and analytics can create measurable value — and help clients see it too.

Product Delivery & Execution

• Own product outcomes from discovery through delivery, balancing client needs, business priorities, technical feasibility, and delivery risk.
• Lead cross-functional initiatives across Engineering, Design, Data, and AI teams — driving alignment, prioritization, and execution.
• Navigate ambiguity, manage dependencies, and make tradeoffs that maximize outcomes without sacrificing momentum.
• Continuously refine roadmaps using client feedback, product analytics, experimentation, and business context.

AI-First Product Thinking

• Partner with engineering and data teams to define AI-enabled product capabilities and evaluate technical tradeoffs — including scalability, performance, privacy, and user experience.
• Design intelligent product experiences that improve client outcomes, automate workflows, and drive operational efficiency.
• Stay current with emerging AI technologies and bring practical recommendations aligned with client goals.
• Champion responsible AI by considering transparency, explainability, security, privacy, and relevant regulatory requirements.
• Use AI tools to improve how you work — research, analysis, documentation, prioritization, and communication.

Client Engagement

• Build trusted relationships with client stakeholders and operate as a strategic product partner throughout the engagement.
• Lead discovery workshops, roadmap planning sessions, prioritization discussions, and executive product reviews.
• Communicate product strategy, progress, tradeoffs, and recommendations clearly to both technical and business audiences.

Qualifications

Required

• 3–5 years of Product Management experience delivering digital products from discovery through launch and continuous iteration.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams to deliver software products, data-driven tools, or AI-enabled solutions.
• Demonstrated ability to work directly with clients or senior stakeholders to define strategy, facilitate discovery, and deliver measurable outcomes.
• Fluency with modern AI tools as a working practitioner — not just theoretical awareness, but daily use.
• Strong understanding of AI technologies including large language models, generative AI, AI agents, and intelligent automation, and their practical product applications.
• Solid product strategy, roadmap, prioritization, and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience using customer research, analytics, and experimentation to inform product decisions.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills — comfortable presenting to technical and business audiences alike.
• Experience working in Agile environments with distributed, multidisciplinary teams.
• Bachelor's degree

Preferred

• Experience delivering enterprise SaaS platforms, workflow automation solutions, or data and AI-driven products.
• Background in Financial Services, FinTech, Healthcare, Digital Health, or Enterprise Operations.
• Experience delivering AI-powered capabilities such as conversational experiences, copilots, recommendation systems, predictive analytics, or document intelligence.
• Familiarity with prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI evaluation, and responsible AI practices.
• Prior experience at a consulting firm, digital product agency, or professional services organization.

What Success Looks Like

Within your first year, you will have owned the full product lifecycle across at least one significant client engagement — from discovery through delivery. You'll have built real trust with client stakeholders, made hard product tradeoffs under pressure, and shipped something that demonstrably moved the needle. More importantly, you'll have a clear sense of what you're capable of and what you want to build next.

Why Roko Labs

Real Ownership

You won't be managing a small slice of someone else's roadmap. You'll own the product function for real client engagements, with the autonomy and accountability that comes with it.

Direct Client Exposure

You will operate in the field — directly embedded with clients, building relationships with senior stakeholders, and influencing real product decisions from day one.

Breadth of Work

Our work spans software, AI, data, and emerging technology across industries. You will never be doing the same thing twice. Every engagement is a new problem.

A Culture That Values How You Think

We are a high-curiosity, low-bureaucracy environment. We care about outcomes, not optics. If you have a better way to do something, we want to hear it.

Accelerated Growth

You’ll have exposure to product strategy, client relationships, engineering, AI, and business development — not just product management. The learning curve is steep on purpose.

Compensation

Base salary: $110,000–$130,000

Who Should Apply

We're particularly interested in people who have done something that demonstrates unusual initiative — shipped a product people actually used, navigated a genuinely complex stakeholder environment, built something from scratch, or applied AI to a real problem in a way that changed how the work got done.

We're looking for someone who wants their next few years to be defined by how much they built, learned, and owned — not by how quickly they moved through a title ladder.