Principal Product Manager, Artificial Intelligence & Computer Vision

Playonsports; Alpharetta (GA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical plans

Dental/Vision/Life

Equity

Open PTO

401(k) plan with match

Hybrid/flexible work environment

Employee Emergency Fund

Job summary

PlayOn Sports is building a production‑grade AI content pipeline and a sport‑agnostic game data model to power prep sports experiences. We seek a Principal Product Manager to own strategy, roadmap, vendor relationships, and operating rhythms at scale.

You will translate goals into AI/CV products, define KPIs, and partner with engineering, data, and external vendors to deliver end‑to‑end capabilities across multiple sports.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in product management or leadership driving cross‑team initiatives.
• Track record accountable for outcomes across engineering, partners, and stakeholders.
• Fluent in AI/ML concepts and able to discuss model quality tradeoffs.
• Strong data fluency: reading/writing SQL and evaluating metrics.
• Experience managing external partner relationships and contracts.
• Excellent communication and executive presence.
• High tolerance for ambiguity with skill in creating structure.

Responsibilities

• Own multi‑year vision for the product line and align stakeholders.
• Translate business goals into AI/CV strategy covering pipelines and surfaces.
• Define and drive KPIs: accuracy, latency, coverage, adoption.
• Lead CV vendor relationships; set agendas and ensure delivery.
• Drive integrations with vendor engineering teams.
• Collaborate with data, ops, and product teams to scale the pipeline.

Skills

Product management leadership

AI/ML concepts

SQL/data fluency

External partner relationships

Communication

Ambiguity handling

Cross-functional leadership

Strategy & roadmap

Job description

PlayOn Sports is the leading platform for high school sports media, streaming live games to millions of fans and powering the next generation of prep sports experiences. PlayOn is investing heavily in its computer‑vision and artificial‑intelligence pipeline, turning raw game footage into highlights, text recaps and statistics. We’re looking for a Principal Product Manager to take end‑to‑end ownership of a new product line focused on these capabilities, from strategy all the way to launch and the operating rhythm that keeps it healthy at scale.

Key Outcomes You Will Deliver

• A production‑grade AI content pipeline, live across multiple sports.
• A sport‑agnostic game data model that is PlayOn’s canonical source of game intelligence.
• An operating model that runs without you in the critical path.

Core Responsibilities

Strategy and Roadmap

• Set and own the multi‑year vision for the product line, aligning business leadership, engineering, partners and vendors on scope, sequencing, and success metrics.
• Translate business goals—including fan engagement and growth, content quality and coverage, and school retention and growth—into a concrete product strategy spanning computer‑vision capabilities, data pipelines, and fan‑facing surfaces.
• Define and drive product line KPIs: accuracy benchmarks, processing latency, content coverage, and downstream product adoption.

Partner & Vendor Leadership

• Own the strategic relationship with our computer‑vision and AI vendors. Set the agenda, work to align roadmaps, and hold partners to their delivery commitments.
• Evaluate new CV capabilities—including object detection, OCR, region‑of‑interest framing, tracking and automated highlight segmentation—and decide what to integrate, when, and why.
• Drive integrations forward with vendor engineering teams, unblocking hard problems and accelerating capability adoption.

Cross‑Functional Leadership

• Partner with Data Engineering to build a sport‑agnostic game data model that works across sports, game formats, broadcast configurations and game data sources.
• Influence cross‑product roadmaps to ensure fan and school‑facing surfaces keep pace with our AI pipeline and create critical feedback loops that inform modeling priorities.
• Give Operations and Support teams the visibility and tooling they need to triage and resolve content delivery issues without engineering escalation.

Operational Ownership

• Build the operating model for the product line, including sport‑specific configurations, fallback handling and quality review workflows, and evolve it as the product scales.
• Close the loop between output quality (human review, fan signals, partner feedback) and upstream model or configuration improvements.
• Own health end‑to‑end. Surface risks early, resolve dependencies, and create transparency around content delivery, timing, quality and coverage.

What You’ll Bring

Required

• 8+ years in product management, technical product management, or a leadership role driving complex cross‑team initiatives end‑to‑end.
• A track record of leading an important company initiative—one where you were the person accountable for the outcome, working across multiple engineering teams, external partners, and business stakeholders.
• Working fluency with AI/ML concepts. You understand what modern ML systems can and can’t do, can reason about model quality tradeoffs, and can hold your own in technical discussions with ML engineers and vendors.
• Strong data fluency. Comfortable reading and writing SQL, interpreting quality metrics, and reasoning about schema design and pipeline tradeoffs.
• Experience owning external partner relationships at a strategic level, shaping integration contracts, holding partners accountable, and escalating effectively.
• Excellent communication. Crisp product writing, clear executive presence, and the ability to build alignment across technical and non‑technical audiences.
• High tolerance for ambiguity; a proven instinct for creating structure and momentum in early‑stage problem spaces.

Preferred

• Experience with live video streaming infrastructure or media processing pipelines (encoding, segmentation, metadata extraction).
• Familiarity with computer‑vision capabilities relevant to sports (object tracking, OCR, scene segmentation, highlight detection).
• Background in sports media, sports data, or adjacent domains (prep sports, broadcast, sports tech).
• Exposure to modern data stacks (Snowflake, dbt, Hightouch) and event‑driven data architectures.
• Experience working with external sports data platforms (MaxPreps, NCAA data feeds, or similar) as data sources or integration targets.

Why This Role

• Real ownership from day one. This is a greenfield product line in one of PlayOn’s highest‑priority investment areas. You’ll shape the strategy, run the execution, and own the outcome.
• Broad scope. You’ll operate critical aspects of our business, across product, partnerships, data and operations. It’s the kind of exposure and scope that builds the next generation of PlayOn leaders.
• Real‑world scale. PlayOn streams tens of thousands of live high school games annually. Your work will generate millions of real moments for real fans.
• Mission that matters. High school sports matter to communities. The athletes you’re building for don’t have broadcast deals or highlight reels—yet. You’ll change that.

How You Play

• Ownership over Participation. You take responsibility for achieving holistic outcomes, prioritize key objectives, and adapt quickly when situations require a different approach. You follow through even against the toughest challenges.
• Team over Stars. You are a bridge builder, establishing processes and relationships with teams outside your own. You work to rally around common goals, find win‑win solutions, compromise when necessary, and help others succeed.
• Growth over Comfort. You are driven by a desire to grow and actively seek opportunities to expand your comfort zone, skills and confidence. You embrace new challenges with curiosity, accepting discomfort and failure as opportunities to learn.
• Fairness over Popularity. You approach decisions with a scientist’s mindset, challenging your assumptions and remaining objective. You consider long‑term impact rather than relying on short‑term gains, proactively seek others’ perspectives, and manage emotions in decision‑making.

Benefits

• Multiple medical insurance plans to choose from
• Dental, vision, life and disability insurance
• Employee Emergency Fund
• Company equity (stock options)
• Open PTO policy
• 401(k) plan with company match
• Hybrid/flexible work environment
• Note: Must be a full‑time employee to participate in the company’s employee health benefit plan. Part‑time employees and interns are not eligible to participate.