Product Owner

Straive; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Straive is seeking a Forward Deployed AI Product Owner to work with education customers, AI engineering teams, and domain experts to transform complex workflows into AI-native products.

This role sits at the intersection of consulting, product management, AI, data strategy, and customer success, embedding with customers and leading delivery through an AI-first SDLC. You will translate business problems into AI solutions and define MVPs with measurable KPIs.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in product management, ownership, consulting, or solution architecture.
• Experience working directly with customers.
• Experience in Agile environments.
• Experience with AI-enabled products.
• Experience in Education, Publishing, Learning Platforms, or EdTech.

Responsibilities

• Define product vision and roadmap for AI-native education products.
• Create Product Requirement Documents (PRDs) and detailed user stories.
• Own AI products from concept through deployment and manage releases.
• Drive adoption and customer success in client-facing engagements.
• Collaborate with AI engineers on architecture and data foundations.

Skills

Product Management

Consulting

AI strategy

Agile

Customer engagement

Job description

We are looking for a highly strategic and execution-oriented Forward Deployed AI Product Owner to work directly with education customers, internal AI engineering teams, and domain experts to transform complex workflows into AI-native products.

Unlike a traditional Product Owner, this role sits at the intersection of consulting, product management, AI, data strategy, and customer success. You will embed with customers, understand their business processes, identify opportunities for AI transformation, define product requirements, and lead delivery through an AI-first SDLC.

This is a client-facing role where you are expected to think like a consultant, act like a product leader, and execute like a startup founder.

The ideal candidate is not just a Product Owner. They are a Forward Deployed AI Product Owner who combines the strengths of a management consultant, product manager, AI strategist, and education domain expert. They thrive in ambiguity, can move seamlessly from an executive workshop to a backlog refinement session, understand both enterprise data architecture and learning ecosystems, and are passionate about building AI-native products that transform how education organizations operate.

What You'll Do

Customer Discovery & Consulting

• Partner directly with education organizations, publishers, universities, K-12 districts, and learning companies.
• Lead discovery workshops to understand business objectives, pain points, workflows, and data ecosystems.
• Map current-state and future-state processes.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into product opportunities.
• Build trusted relationships with executive stakeholders.

AI Product Ownership

Own AI products from concept through deployment.

Responsibilities include:

• Define product vision and roadmap.
• Create Product Requirement Documents (PRDs).
• Write detailed user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Vibe coding to bring ideas to life
• Manage releases.
• Drive adoption and customer success.

Lead products through an AI-native software development lifecycle, including:

• Discovery
• AI-assisted architecture
• Human review workflows
• Development
• Testing
• Evaluation
• Deployment
• Continuous optimization

You will work closely with AI engineers to ensure products leverage:

• LLMs
• Agentic workflows
• RAG
• Knowledge Graphs
• MCPs
• AI orchestration
• Multi-agent systems

Education Domain Expertise

Understand how learning products are created and consumed.

• Instructional Design
• Assessments
• Accessibility
• Learning standards
• Learning Management Systems
• Content Management Systems
• Learning Objects
• Metadata
• Digital publishing

Experience with publishers or EdTech organizations is highly desirable.

Partner with customers to define AI-ready data foundations.

Responsibilities

• Ontology development
• Knowledge repositories
• Data governance
• Semantic search
• AI content repositories

Responsibilities

• Convert business problems into AI solutions
• Create product roadmaps
• Define MVPs
• Identify AI use cases
• Create business process maps
• Define KPIs and success metrics
• Coordinate releases

Required Qualifications

Experience

• 8+ years in Product Management, Product Ownership, Consulting, or Solution Architecture
• Experience working directly with customers
• Experience in Agile environments
• Experience with AI-enabled products
• Experience within Education, Publishing, Learning Platforms, or EdTech