Staff Product Manager, Technical

Robots and Pencils; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Robots & Pencils, an applied AI engineering firm, seeks a Principal Product Manager to drive product vision and strategy across engagements, owning the hardest product challenges and shaping how product management is practiced at the firm.

You’ll partner with senior leadership, define success metrics, and lead discovery, roadmapping, and delivery at scale, bringing an AI-forward mindset to accelerate production-ready AI solutions for clients.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in product management, with a track record in consultative or enterprise environments.
• Experience defining product vision and strategy at program or portfolio level for complex, high-stakes digital initiatives.
• Expert-level client advisory skills and executive-level influence.
• Experience leading discovery, roadmapping, and delivery across large, multi-stakeholder organizations.
• Mentoring senior product managers and shaping team PM practices.

Responsibilities

• Drive product vision and strategy on engagements you support, owning direction for the most complex, high-stakes digital products.
• Define operating models, discovery practices, and delivery standards for the engagement.
• Own the most difficult product challenges by framing problems, aligning stakeholders, and driving resolution at scale.
• Define success frameworks and use data, research, and user insight to evaluate outcomes and shape product direction.
• Identify opportunities to improve how product is practiced across engagements and contribute learnings back to R&P.
• Bring an AI-forward mindset, using AI tools to drive efficiency, research synthesis, and product thinking at scale.
• Partner with senior leadership and client executives as the principal product advisor, shaping vision and direction at the engagement level.
• Represent product thinking at leadership level, influencing strategy, delivery, and technology decisions.
• Lead the most complex stakeholder forums, workshops, and executive-level discussions.
• Define and champion product delivery standards and best practices on engagements.

Skills

Product strategy

Stakeholder management

AI product management

Client advisory

Roadmapping

Leadership

Mentoring

Cross-functional leadership

Discovery

Metrics & success

GenAI awareness

Education

Bachelor's degree in related field

Tools

Claude

Job description

Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We're all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there.We've earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship.

Position Overview

We're looking for a Principal Product Manager to drive product vision and strategy across the engagements they support. This role is ideal for a deeply experienced product leader who owns the hardest product challenges, serves as the senior product voice in client relationships, and shapes how product management is practiced at Robots & Pencils.

Why This Role Matters

Principal Product Managers are how Robots and Pencils turns the hardest client problems into products that actually move the business. On the programs you lead, you set the vision, hold the bar on what ships, and shape how product gets practiced across the firm. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days; that pace holds only when someone owns the strategy with conviction, makes the trade-off calls others elevate, and brings clients along on the bigger bet.

What You’ll Do

Craft & Delivery

• Drive product vision and strategy on the engagements you support, owning direction for the most complex, high-stakes digital products
• Define product operating models, discovery practices, and delivery standards for the engagement
• Own the most difficult product challenges — framing problems, aligning stakeholders, and driving resolution at scale
• Define success frameworks and use data, research, and user insight to evaluate outcomes and shape product direction
• Identify opportunities to improve how product is practiced across the engagement and contribute those learnings back to R&P
• Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude to drive efficiency, research synthesis, and product thinking at scale

Collaboration & Communication

• Partner with senior leadership and client executives as the principal product advisor, shaping product vision and direction at the engagement level
• Represent product thinking at the leadership level, influencing how strategy, delivery, and technology decisions are made
• Lead the most complex stakeholder forums, workshops, and executive-level discussions

Leadership & Influence

• Define and champion product delivery standards and best practices on the engagements you support
• Mentor experienced PMs, helping them grow their product judgment, strategic thinking, and client impact
• Own the most difficult product decisions, serving as the senior product decision-maker on complex tradeoffs
• Contribute to business development, proposals, and the growth of R&P's product management practice

What You’ll Bring

• 10+ years of experience in product management, with a strong record in consultative or enterprise environments
• Demonstrated track record of defining product vision and strategy at the program or portfolio level for complex, high-stakes digital initiatives, with measurable business impact
• Expert-level client advisory skills and experience influencing at the executive level
• Deep experience leading discovery, roadmapping, and delivery across large, multi-stakeholder organizations
• Track record of mentoring senior product managers and shaping team-level PM practices
• Strong cross-functional leadership and the ability to align engineering, design, strategy, and business at scale
• Experience defining product metrics, success frameworks, and iterative delivery models
• Deep applied experience with AI tools to drive efficiency, research synthesis, and product thinking at scale (e.g., Claude)
• Deep consulting or professional services delivery experience, with the gravitas to act as the primary product voice with senior client stakeholders and the discipline to deliver under client constraints
• Experience contributing to business development, proposals, or practice growth is a plus
• A formed point of view on how AI is reshaping product management, with the credibility to influence both client and internal thinking

Helpful Extras and Unique Skills

• Comfort prototyping with AI tools to validate product hypotheses (e.g., Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot), de-risking decisions before engineering invests in them
• Working fluency in GenAI fundamentals — LLMs, RAG, prompt and context engineering, and where models break — enough to frame the right product questions with engineering and clients
• Hands-on contribution to AI-powered products — features, prompts, evals.
• External presence in the product or AI product community (writing, speaking, advisory work) that builds external pull for the firm.
• Vertical depth in one or more of Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, or Manufacturing

You’ll Do Well Here if You Are

• A doer. You see something broken and fix it. You'd rather move on clarity than wait for certainty.
• A fast learner who knows you don’t know everything. The AI landscape changes weekly. You’re senior enough to know better and curious enough to keep learning anyway.
• Direct in a way that makes the work better. You give honest feedback. You'd rather have the hard conversation than blow smoke.
• Obsessed with craft. You know genius is in the details. You ship exceptional, not perfect, and you don’t put your name on work you wouldn’t stand behind.
• Built for ownership. You honor commitments, admit mistakes fast, and back your teammates when a decision costs something. No handoffs, no finger-pointing.
• All in. You treat clients’ businesses like your own. You take the work seriously without taking yourself seriously.
• Resourceful when the budget, timeline, or team is tight. Constraints don’t slow you down. They sharpen you.
• Glad to be in the room with people who care as much as you do. Our teams average fifteen-plus years of experience. We hire people who push each other to do better work.
• Honest about what you don’t know. You name the assumption, separate customer truth from client opinion, and AI promise from AI reality. You'd rather slow the room down for the right question than rush to the wrong answer.

An offer of employment may be conditional upon successful completion of a background check in accordance with local legislation and our candidate privacy notice. Your current employer will not be contacted without your permission. We are committed to ensuring equal employment opportunities for all job applicants and employees. Employment decisions are based upon job-related reasons regardless of an applicant’s race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, marital status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other status protected by law.

The salary range for this role is $ 170.000 CAD - $225.000 CAD. We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.

The salary range for this role is $ 160.000 USD - $220.000 USD. We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.

An offer of employment may be conditional upon successful completion of a background check in accordance with local legislation and our candidate privacy notice. Your current employer will not be contacted without your permission. We are committed to ensuring equal employment opportunities for all job applicants and employees. Employment decisions are based upon job-related reasons regardless of an applicant’s race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, marital status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other status protected by law.