Director, Product Development - Agentic Commerce Platform & Product Strategy

About American Express Digital Labs

American Express Digital Labs catalyzes digital innovation across the enterprise by originating, incubating, and scaling products and platforms that matter to our customers’ digital lives. We combine creativity, customer centricity, and technical excellence to reimagine how Card Members experience payments and membership in a digital world.

As a fast-moving, entrepreneurial team, we partner with leading technology companies and strategic partners to bring differentiated digital payment solutions and engaging membership experiences to market.

Role Overview

We are seeking a Director of Product Development to lead product strategy and platform development for Agentic Commerce at American Express.

Reporting to the Vice President of Product Development, Agentic Commerce, this leader will define the foundational capabilities, customer experiences, and operating models required to support secure and scalable agent-driven commerce across the American Express ecosystem.

The role is responsible for translating the broader Agentic Commerce vision into a multi-year product strategy and roadmap. It will focus on defining the capabilities, experiences, and trust frameworks required to support agent-driven commerce while ensuring those capabilities can scale across partners, channels, and future use cases.

As a trusted, closed-loop network, American Express is uniquely positioned to extend its authentication, authorization, identity, and risk capabilities into AI-powered commerce experiences while preserving Card Member visibility and control over agent-initiated activity. By leveraging our membership model, premium brand, and differentiated data assets, this leader will help define the experiences and capabilities that create value for Card Members, merchants, partners, and the broader ecosystem.

This role requires deep engagement with payments infrastructure, AI and agent technologies, platform architecture, and emerging industry standards. Success will require strong cross-functional leadership and the ability to align stakeholders across product, engineering, risk management, policy, operations, legal, network, and commercial organizations.

Product Strategy & Roadmap

Product Vision and Strategy

• Define the product vision, principles, and strategic roadmap for Agentic Commerce.
• Establish the foundational capabilities, customer experiences, and operating models required to support agent-driven commerce across the American Express ecosystem.
• Guide decisions related to interoperability, identity, authorization, customer controls, ecosystem participation, and platform evolution.

Enterprise-Wide Strategy

• Partner across the enterprise, including with business development, network, merchant, policy, servicing, disputes, identity, mobile, risk management, and engineering teams, to define a clear perspective and execution plan for how American Express supports Card Members, merchants, partners, and the broader ecosystem.
• Lead customer research, analytics, and long-range planning to identify opportunities, inform investment decisions, and shape roadmap priorities.
• Evaluate complex technical, customer, regulatory, and commercial tradeoffs to inform product strategy and investment decisions.

Emerging Technology Leadership

• Partner with engineering leaders to evaluate emerging technologies and protocols, including AI agents, large language models (LLMs), Model Context Protocol (MCP), identity frameworks, and delegated authorization approaches.
• Translate emerging technologies into differentiated product capabilities and business opportunities.
• Develop perspectives on emerging industry trends and their implications for American Express and the broader commerce ecosystem.
• Define and drive the roadmap for the core capabilities that power agentic commerce, including enrollment and provisioning, authentication, authorization, identity, consent, intent management, spend controls, lifecycle management, servicing, disputes, and customer transparency experiences.
• Define scalable platform services, operational processes, and governance frameworks that support adoption across partners and channels. Ensure Card Members maintain meaningful visibility, transparency, and control over agent-initiated activity through thoughtfully designed experiences.

Platform Development & Delivery

Foundational Capabilities

• Define and drive the roadmap for the core capabilities that power agentic commerce, including enrollment and provisioning, authentication, authorization, identity, consent, intent management, spend controls, lifecycle management, servicing, disputes, and customer transparency experiences.
• Define scalable platform services, operational processes, and governance frameworks that support adoption across partners and channels.
• Ensure Card Members maintain meaningful visibility, transparency, and control over agent-initiated activity through thoughtfully designed experiences.

Roadmap Execution

• Lead the development and execution of a complex, multi-year roadmap spanning platform services, orchestration layers, risk capabilities, architecture, and operating processes while integrating with existing payments infrastructure.
• Partner closely with engineering leaders on APIs, platform architecture, AI-enabled systems, and long-term technology strategy.
• Drive delivery of reusable capabilities that can support multiple partners, channels, and commerce experiences.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Drive alignment and execution across product, engineering, risk, policy, operations, legal, network, and commercial teams to deliver scalable, secure, and compliant solutions.
• Mobilize stakeholders across a highly matrixed organization and establish clear priorities, decision-making frameworks, and operating rhythms.

Industry Engagement & Ecosystem Influence

Industry Perspective & Positioning

• Monitor industry developments, emerging business models, and competitive dynamics to help shape American Express’ strategy in agentic commerce.
• Represent the product organization in discussions related to industry direction, interoperability, and ecosystem evolution.

Standards & Ecosystem Engagement

• Partner closely with Network teams to support American Express participation in industry forums, standards bodies, and ecosystem working groups.
• Contribute to emerging approaches related to identity, authentication, authorization, trust frameworks, delegated purchasing, and agentic commerce interoperability.

• Engage with strategic partners and industry stakeholders to inform platform priorities and roadmap decisions.

Collaboration Across Agentic Commerce Product Teams

Partner Integrations Collaboration

• Partner with the Agentic Commerce Partner Integrations team to ensure platform capabilities can be effectively implemented across strategic partners.
• Provide product direction, platform requirements, and reusable capabilities that enable efficient onboarding and scale.
• Incorporate partner feedback into roadmap planning and future platform investments.

Network Collaboration

• Partner closely with American Express Network teams to define and deliver foundational capabilities that support agentic commerce across the broader payments ecosystem.
• Align product strategy, requirements, and roadmaps across issuer and network perspectives to ensure scalable and interoperable solutions.
• Collaborate on the development of capabilities related to authentication, authorization, tokenization, spend controls, identity, merchant enablement, and trust infrastructure.
• Drive alignment on long-term platform architecture, operating models, and ecosystem strategy to support future scale.

Growth & Emerging Capabilities Collaboration

• Partner with the Growth & Emerging Capabilities team to evaluate new technologies, business models, and ecosystem opportunities.
• Help assess which opportunities should become strategic platform investments and transition validated concepts into the core roadmap.

Launch, Management & Scale

Platform Launch & Iteration

• Launch and scale foundational capabilities that enable adoption of Agentic Commerce across partners and customer experiences.
• Continuously refine roadmap priorities based on customer insights, adoption trends, partner feedback, and market developments.

Adoption & Growth Optimization

• Drive measurable adoption and utilization of Agentic Commerce capabilities across products, partners, and customer experiences.
• Adapt strategy and prioritization based on learnings, performance insights, and evolving ecosystem dynamics.

Team Leadership & Culture

Authentic Leadership

• Lead with empathy and clarity, building a collaborative, high-performing product organization.
• Serve as a strategic thought partner to the Vice President of Product Development, Agentic Commerce.

Team Building

• Foster innovation, accountability, and continuous learning to elevate product management excellence and develop future product leaders.
• Build a culture that balances customer obsession, technical rigor, strategic thinking, and operational excellence.

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive product leadership experience, with significant depth in payments, fintech, platform products, developer ecosystems, or other complex, regulated technology environments.
• Proven experience defining product strategy and leading multi-year roadmaps that span multiple business units, technology domains, and stakeholder groups.
• Demonstrated track record of 0→1 product development, including defining and launching new products, platforms, or capabilities in emerging markets where standards, customer expectations, and operating models were still evolving.
• Experience building platform-level capabilities rather than standalone features, including services that support multiple products, partners, channels, or ecosystem participants.
• Strong understanding of payments and trust infrastructure, including authentication, authorization, identity, consent, fraud and risk management, tokenization, and transaction processing systems.
• Experience partnering closely with engineering organizations to define APIs, platform architectures, orchestration layers, and scalable product frameworks.
• Proven ability to operate effectively in highly matrixed environments, aligning stakeholders across business, engineering, risk, policy, legal, operations, and commercial organizations.
• Demonstrated ability to evaluate complex technical, customer, regulatory, and commercial tradeoffs and make high-quality product decisions in ambiguous environments.
• Customer-obsessed mindset with experience leveraging customer research, data, and analytics to shape product strategy and roadmap decisions.
• Exceptional communication skills and executive presence, with the ability to influence senior leaders and translate complex technical concepts into clear business outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong knowledge of card payments infrastructure, including issuer processing, card lifecycle management, card-on-file experiences, tokenization, digital wallets, network token frameworks, and credential provisioning.
• Experience working with digital wallet ecosystems such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, merchant wallets, or tokenized payment experiences.
• Exposure to fraud systems, risk modeling, financial controls, authorization systems, or transaction decisioning platforms.
• Direct experience building, integrating, or scaling AI-powered products, agent systems, LLM-based platforms, developer platforms, or ecosystem products.
• Experience contributing to industry standards, technical protocols, interoperability frameworks, or ecosystem governance initiatives.
• Deep understanding of identity, delegated authorization, user consent, transparency, and control mechanisms in digital or AI-driven environments.
• Experience launching products across platform ecosystems, including AI platforms, wallets, marketplaces, operating systems, or developer networks.
• Experience partnering with policy, regulatory, compliance, or governance stakeholders in emerging technology domains.
• MBA or advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Business, or a related field.

Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the United States is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.