Director of Product Strategy & Applied AIDepartment: IT
Employment Type: Full Time
Location: Remote- USA
Compensation: $234,000 - $260,000 / year
DescriptionThis role leads Trilon's product strategy practice, in close partnership with AI Field Engineering and Solution Architecture. It runs the team that goes into the field, finds where the work is slow or manual, prototypes against it with those partners, and proves what is worth building - and it runs the mechanics that keep the team productive: capacity, backlog, deep dives, the idea tracker, field use cases, and enhancement demand from live products.
It is a hands-on seat: the Director prototypes, reads code, tests agents, and works in the stack alongside the team, not only reviews it. The role builds the evidence investment decisions rest on - discovery findings, prototypes, feasibility and market input, sizing, and the value hypothesis - and brings it to Investment Council.
Key ResponsibilitiesTeam Leadership and Capacity- Team leadership - hiring, ramp, performance, and coaching for a team of product strategists and business architects
- Capacity management across the product strategy team, with tradeoffs made visible rather than quietly absorbed
- Cross-functional partnership with AI Field Engineering and Solution Architecture on prototype, feasibility, and architecture work
- Judgment on the hard calls - a value hypothesis that will not hold, a prototype drifting into production, a sponsor set on a predetermined answer
- Operating cadence - discovery readouts, prototype demos, and backlog reviews that compound learning across the firms
Discovery and Field Intelligence - Enterprise and product discovery, end to end - from field signal through to the synthesis that separates a pattern from a one-off
- Project deep dives - planned, staffed, and documented so each one ends in findings and a decision
- Idea tracker run as a working funnel in Jira Product Discovery - capture, triage, sizing, disposition, and visible status
- Field use-case library in Confluence or SharePoint - where AI is applied across the firms, what worked, what is reusable
- Market and vendor scan with Field Engineering and Solution Architecture - what is buyable, what is already in the stack, what has to be built
- Field relationships with operating-company presidents, practice leaders, and IT that keep signal flowing continuously
Applied AI and Prototyping - Field-based design - time with practitioners, designing against observed work rather than theory
- Prototype scoping - future automations, applications and agents (OpenAI Agents/SDK, Copilot Studio, Power Automate) aimed at the riskiest assumption
- Hands-on technical fluency - enterprise LLM platforms, the OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and Anthropic APIs, and AI-assisted development in Cursor or VS Code
- Technical direction of developers - framing what gets built, pressure-testing the approach, reviewing the work, and knowing enough of the build path to hold a prototype honest on effort, risk, and reuse
- Working conventions with Field Engineering and Solution Architecture - GitHub, reusable components, Azure environments, and the line between throwaway and production
- Greenfield build instinct - designing new applications, agents, and data products from a blank page rather than extending incumbent AEC platforms, with prototypes instrumented so usage, latency, and failure are measured, not assumed
Backlog and Intake - A single prioritized backlog in Jira - discovery requests, deep dives, prototype work, and enhancement demand from live products
- Prioritization and sequencing against capacity, re-sequenced openly and groomed so every item has an owner and a next step
- Enhancement triage - defect, enhancement for Product Management, or new opportunity worth discovery
Business Architecture and Service Design - Business architecture - service blueprints, personas, current-state architecture, and value stream mapping in Miro, etc
- Future-state service design - the target practitioner and client experience, tested as a Figma concept before a story is written
- Shared Services orchestration - Solution Architecture, Data Engineering, Cybersecurity, UI/UX, CAD, Platform Engineering - scoped to inform the work, not become a build
- Early feasibility calls - data availability in SQL, Databricks or Fabric, integration surface, and Azure cost to run
Business Case and Investment Evidence - Evidence packages per opportunity - problem framing, prototype results, sizing, ROI logic in Power BI, and the value hypothesis
- Pricing, cost-to-serve, and financial modeling, including buy-vs-build recommendations with assumptions stated plainly enough to be argued with
- Investment Council material - the recommendation, the math behind it, and the follow-ups when work comes back for sharpening
- Intake discipline - parking opportunities that lack a clear owner, a real value hypothesis, or evidence
- Success measures and stage gates set at approval, so a funded bet can be judged against what was promised
Handoff and Value Realization - Clean handoff to Product Management - intent, scope, and value hypothesis confirmed at approval
- Availability through the build without taking the wheel - Product Management and Product Engineering decide when and how the work ships
- Value realization with Product Enablement - baseline agreed before launch, adoption and in-market data read against it, and an honest assessment when a bet did not move the needle
- Feedback loop - adoption gaps, workarounds, and enhancement requests routed back into discovery, the idea tracker, and the backlog
Domain Maturity and Enablement - Practice standards in Jira, Confluence , etc - discovery method, deep-dive format, prototype conventions, sizing, and financial modeling
- Playbooks and onboarding that let the function scale across the family of firms without re-inventing itself for each operating company
- Representation to AI Innovation & Digital Products leadership, executive sponsors, IT leadership, and partner firms - including demos and field sessions that show rather than describe
Skills, Knowledge and ExpertiseRequirements / Qualifications - 15+ years in product strategy, product management, solution engineering, or technology consulting, with 3+ years leading a team - hiring, coaching, performance, and capacity planning
- Bachelor's degree in a technology- or business-related field; advanced degree a plus
- Demonstrated hands-on technical depth with applied AI - enterprise LLM platforms (ChatGPT Enterprise, Claude Enterprise, Microsoft Copilot), agents, copilots, and automation - with prototypes or workflows you personally built and put in front of real users
- Experience directing developers or engineers on prototype and MVP work - setting the technical direction, reviewing approach and output, and translating between practitioner need and build reality without owning the codebase
- Working fluency across the stack this team uses: OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and Anthropic APIs; Cursor or VS Code with GitHub Copilot; GitHub, Azure, and Postman; and agent tooling such as OpenAI Agents/SDK, Copilot Studio, or Power Automate
- Experience running discovery in the field - sitting with practitioners, running project deep dives, and turning what you observed into documented use cases and testable prototypes
- Proven ownership of a backlog and team capacity in Jira and Jira Product Discovery - prioritizing discovery, prototype, and enhancement demand against finite people, and communicating the tradeoffs upward and outward
- Data fluency - SQL and modern data platforms (Databricks / Fabric), with Power BI for sizing, value measurement, and portfolio reporting
- Strong business architecture and service design craft - service blueprints, personas, current- and future-state mapping, value stream analysis, worked in Miro, Lucidchart, and Figma - applied to real operating environments
- Sound commercial judgment - pricing, cost-to-serve, ROI models, and buy-vs-build recommendations you have had to defend to a funding body
- Track record influencing senior executives and operating leaders who do not report to you, and supporting investment decisions through a formal governance or council process
- Ability to communicate at every altitude - a VP-level boss and executive sponsors, peer leaders in Product Management, Product Engineering, and Product Enablement, the team reporting up, and field practitioners - and to write the one-page recommendation an executive can decide from
- Comfort in an early-stage function - setting standards and shaping the operating model as demand scales
- Exposure to AEC, engineering services, or other physical-world operating environments preferred - with more weight on having built greenfield products than on deep familiarity with incumbent platforms (Autodesk, Bentley, Bluebeam, Trimble); working knowledge of where those systems hold the data is useful, but not the qualifying skill
Pay TransparencyThe base salary range for this role is indicated in the posting. This range reflects the company's good faith estimate of the compensation for this position at the time of posting. Final compensation will be determined based on factors such as experience, skills, qualifications, internal equity, and geographic location.
