Forward Deployed Product Manager

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Immerse yourself in a Forward Deployed Experience Pod, collaborating closely with the client to fully understand their workflow before initiating redesign efforts.

• Take responsibility for the workflow, KPIs, and alignment within your pod. Establish success metrics with the executive sponsor in the first week, and work diligently until you achieve them. Evaluate outcomes based on KPIs rather than merely features delivered.

• Redesign the human experience centered around AI, rather than adapting AI to existing frameworks.

• Deconstruct complex business challenges into manageable, deployable tasks that the pod can address in days instead of quarters, ensuring daily production progress.

• Collaborate within your client's tech stack alongside the Forward Deployed Engineer and Forward Deployed Experience Designer in your pod.

• Partner with Valtech leadership and your client's executive sponsor(s) to navigate obstacles in real time, including legal, compliance, architecture, risk, governance, and internal politics.

• Ensure governance, security, and outcome measurement from the very beginning. Implementing AI in production requires diligent attention to evaluations, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop design. You will maintain a framework that validates the solution's effectiveness and its sustainability post-engagement.

• Facilitate a smooth transfer of ownership. By the conclusion of the engagement, the domain expert will be equipped to manage the solution independently without the pod's assistance. You will deliver documentation, conventions, and team rituals necessary for sustaining the change.

• Identify upcoming opportunities within the work itself. Embedded pods can recognize issues before they become apparent to others. You will relay this information back, enabling the pod to secure its involvement in subsequent challenges rather than waiting for procurement.

• Contribute to the advancement of Valtech's FDE practice. Each pod serves as a learning loop. Share insights about successes, failures, and the patterns that should be integrated into our client deployment strategies.

⛳️ Requirements

• Proven experience as a senior Product Manager in a digital consultancy, product organization, or embedded-team setting, with a history of delivering production software rather than merely facilitating discovery.

• Possess a T-shaped skill set. While product management is your primary expertise, you also have sufficient hands-on experience in engineering and UX design to contribute meaningfully in these areas. You can interpret code, create prototypes in Figma, and engage in technical and design trade-off discussions.

• Demonstrated success in transitioning AI or ML solutions from concept to production, as opposed to just pilot phases. You understand the reasons many AI pilots fail to reach production, and have direct experience navigating the related personnel, process, and governance challenges.

• Proficient in modern AI tools across the software development life cycle (SDLC): AI-assisted requirements gathering, prototyping with tools like Figma Make or Claude, AI-accelerated development collaboration with engineers, agent evaluation frameworks, and the practical judgment to discern what is production-ready.

• Strong executive presence complemented by hands-on credibility. Equally effective in collaborative sessions with engineers and in executive sponsor reviews, earning trust quickly within client teams and functioning as a partner rather than a vendor.

• Ability to decompose ambiguous business problems into manageable, deployable units of work and organize them for daily progress, demonstrating value continuously rather than at the end of lengthy cycles.

• Solid commercial awareness, comfortable with milestone-based engagements where the pod is accountable for deliverables rather than hours worked.

• Experience in modern delivery environments, with the adaptability to tailor the operational model to the engagement rather than adhering rigidly to a framework. Equally capable in situations where backlogs, rituals, and playbooks are not yet established.

• A proven track record of strengthening teams beyond your initial involvement. The FDE model relies on capability transfer, so the ability to coach a domain expert into ownership is an essential aspect of the role, not an added bonus.

🏝️ Benefits

• Opportunities for growth

• A culture driven by values

• International career prospects

• An opportunity to influence the future of experience