Principal Product Manager - AI/ML
First seen by Alion on Oct 19, 2026.
Position Title : Principal Product Manager
Department/Function : Product & Engineering
Key Responsibilities :
Product Strategy & Vision :
- Define and evangelize the vision for the company's AI products, spanning ML models, generative AI features, and intelligent automation.
- Build a product roadmap that balances technical innovation, model performance, market differentiation, and business impact.
- Conduct competitive research and track emerging AI techniques (LLMs, multimodal models, agents, RAG, fine-tuning) to keep the product portfolio at the cutting edge.
- Make build-vs-buy decisions across foundation models, third-party APIs, and in-house model development.
Product Development & Execution :
- Lead the end-to-end product lifecycle : ideation, requirement definition, model/feature development, launch, and iteration.
- Collaborate with engineering and data science teams to design scalable AI systems leveraging first-party data, foundation models, and human feedback loops.
- Author high-quality PRDs, user stories, and acceptance criteria - including model evaluation criteria, quality bars, and guardrails - ensuring clarity for cross-functional teams.
- Drive integration strategy with data pipelines, MLOps infrastructure, and downstream applications to operationalize AI capabilities at scale.
- Define and manage the data strategy that fuels training, evaluation, and continuous improvement of models.
Responsible AI & Governance :
- Develop solutions that deliver AI value while maintaining strict compliance with privacy and data regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and industry-specific rules.
- Establish frameworks for model safety, fairness, bias mitigation, explainability, and human oversight.
- Ensure robust governance around data usage, model versioning, auditability, and responsible deployment.
- Explore advanced techniques such as retrieval-augmented generation, evaluation harnesses, and guardrail systems to continuously improve reliability and trust.
User Experience & Enablement :
- Collaborate with UX designers to simplify complex AI-driven workflows and design for uncertainty, transparency, and user trust.
- Provide clear product documentation, training, and enablement materials - including prompt guidance and model behavior expectations - to maximize adoption.
Performance & Optimization :
- Define metrics for success (model accuracy/quality, latency, cost per inference, adoption, task success rate, user satisfaction) and continuously optimize solutions.
- Use data-driven insights and offline/online evaluation to iterate on products, identify gaps, and enhance model performance and reliability.
- Balance model quality, cost, and speed to hit business and user experience targets.
Qualifications: Experience, Skills & Education :
Education :
- Bachelor's or master's in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field.
Experience :
- 5+ years in product management, with significant experience owning AI/ML or data-centric products.
- Proven track record shipping products powered by machine learning, generative AI, or large-scale data systems.
Skills & Expertise :
- Strong understanding of AI/ML concepts: supervised/unsupervised learning, LLMs, embeddings, RAG, fine-tuning, evaluation methodology, and model deployment.
- Ability to translate complex technical capabilities into clear product strategy and business impact.
- Exceptional stakeholder management, communication, and leadership skills.
- Strong analytical mindset with experience in SQL, data modeling, or analytics.
- Comfort operating in a fast-paced, high-growth environment and leading cross-functional initiatives.
- Familiarity with MLOps, experimentation frameworks, and A/B testing.
Nice-to-Haves :
- Hands-on experience with prompt engineering, model fine-tuning, or building agentic/LLM-based applications.
- Familiarity with privacy-enhancing technologies, responsible AI frameworks, and data governance.
- Experience building and scaling AI platforms or multi-model systems in production
Skills
Product Management, Product Roadmap, Product Strategy, PDLC, AI Product Management, Machine Learning, Generative AI, LLM, RAG, Artificial Intelligence