Position OverviewWe'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.
In this role, you will operate as the principal product authority on a cross-functional team, defining vision, setting delivery standards, and partnering with client executives on product direction. You'll mentor experienced PMs, contribute to practice growth, and bring the depth of experience to navigate complexity, ambiguity, and high-stakes decisions with confidence.
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 escalate, 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.
