Principal Product Manager - AI & Intelligent Manufacturing Systems at Fictiv — Oakland, CA

Impact In This Role

As our Principal Product Manager - AI & Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, you’ll serve as a strategic and technical thought leader driving the vision, roadmap, and execution of AI-powered capabilities across Fictiv’s Manufacturing Quoting and Fulfillment Platform. This is a highly visible, high-leverage role — one that shapes how AI and automation become foundational to Fictiv’s operating system for new product development (NPD). You’ll partner directly with our AI R&D, data science, and platform architecture teams to define the core intelligence layer that powers quoting, supply orchestration, and manufacturing decision-making at scale.

You will own and evolve the product strategy that fuses advanced AI models, data-driven automation, and manufacturing domain intelligence into a cohesive system that sets new standards for operational efficiency, precision, and speed.

This role is ideal for a seasoned product leader with experience bringing AI-first enterprise platforms to life — someone equally comfortable discussing model architectures and data pipelines as they are business value and market differentiation.

You will report to the VP, Product Management.

Areas of Responsibility:

1. AI Technology Strategy & Product Vision

• Define the long-term AI technology strategy for Fictiv’s digital manufacturing platform — including where and how to leverage LLMs, machine learning, computer vision, and reinforcement learning
• Partner with AI research and engineering leadership to translate R&D advances into scalable, customer-facing capabilities
• Identify and prioritize core AI product opportunities — from intelligent quoting and auto-classification of 3D models to predictive supplier matching and adaptive routing engines
• Drive the architectural vision for Fictiv’s AI intelligence layer, ensuring alignment between data infrastructure, ML systems, and platform integration
• Evangelize the role of AI within the organization — educating teams on capabilities, limitations, and ethical deployment of intelligent systems

2. Deep Technical Product Leadership

• Serve as the product owner for AI infrastructure and model lifecycle management, including data acquisition, training, deployment, monitoring, and feedback loops
• Partner with ML engineers and data scientists to design human-in-the-loop workflows that continuously improve system accuracy and explainability
• Own the AI feature pipeline: define use cases, establish model performance metrics (precision, recall, latency, cost), and measure impact on business KPIs (quote accuracy, margin, lead time)
• Collaborate with platform engineering to ensure scalability, modularity, and compliance in AI integrations
• Drive responsible AI practices, including fairness, transparency, and auditability in model-driven decision systems

3. Solutions Integration & Application Development

• Lead the development of AI-driven application modules — such as automated quoting, manufacturability assessment, supplier recommendation, and production forecasting
• Work with product teams across quoting, fulfillment, and partner management to identify where intelligence adds differentiated value
• Ensure AI and automation capabilities are embedded seamlessly into Fictiv’s core user experiences and operational workflows
• Act as a bridge between AI technology development and solution commercialization, ensuring innovations move efficiently from lab to production

4. Metrics, Experimentation, and Validation

• Define the performance framework for all AI-enabled systems, including model metrics (accuracy, throughput, latency), business KPIs (margin improvement, cycle time reduction), and adoption metrics
• Lead data-informed experimentation programs to validate new model capabilities and measure real-world impact before scaling
• Champion continuous learning loops between R&D, product, and operations teams

5. Cross-Functional & Executive Influence

• Partner with senior leadership across Product, Engineering, Data, and Operations to align AI investments with strategic business outcomes
• Influence architecture, resource allocation, and data strategy decisions that affect Fictiv’s AI roadmap
• Mentor and guide other product managers in the organization on AI-first thinking and technical product management best practices
• Represent Fictiv externally — at conferences, customer forums, and AI ecosystem events — as a thought leader in intelligent manufacturing systems

Experience/Qualifications:

Required

• 10+ years of product management experience, including 4+ years leading AI or ML-driven products from research to production
• Startup experience with demonstrated 0-to-MVP-to-1 product ownership; ideally at a company that achieved a successful exit (acquisition or IPO)
• Proven track record building AI-first SaaS or enterprise systems, ideally in manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, or industrial automation
• Deep understanding of AI technologies, including LLMs, supervised/unsupervised ML, computer vision, or predictive analytics pipelines
• Demonstrated success collaborating with AI research teams and data engineering to operationalize models into scalable, production-grade systems
• Fluency in data infrastructure concepts (feature stores, inference APIs, model retraining, observability)
• Strong technical intuition and ability to engage deeply with engineers and data scientists on architecture, experimentation, and trade-offs.
• Analytical rigor and comfort with experimentation frameworks, A/B testing, and quantitative product measurement