{"id":832682,"url":"https://alion.io/job/kamiwaza-principal-product-managerhead-of-product","title":"Principal Product Manager/Head of Product","company":{"id":679829,"name":"Kamiwaza","domain":"kamiwaza.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/kamiwaza","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"is_intermediary":false,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"Product","role_family":"Product","seniority":"head","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Silverthorne, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":185000,"max":250000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":250000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Knowledge Graph","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-03-27T19:58:53Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-03-27","last_verified_at":"2026-09-24T02:57:50Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":180,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":180},"description":"Principal Product Manager/Head of Product\nRole Overview\nKamiwaza is an enterprise AI orchestration platform that organizations deploy on-premises or in their own cloud to run inference, connect distributed data sources, build knowledge graphs, and orchestrate multi-agent AI workflows. The platform is Kubernetes-based, silicon-agnostic, and built for environments where security and data sovereignty are non-negotiable.\nKamiwaza needs a dedicated product leader who can translate customer problems into clear priorities, validated solutions, and coherent releases without becoming a feature-request router. This is a hands-on individual contributor role focused on product strategy, discovery, prioritization, and cross-functional alignment. You will partner deeply with engineering, design, product marketing, and go-to-market, and you will use AI tooling aggressively to increase throughput and decision quality.\nThe Unique Challenge: Fast Internal Build Cycles, Deliberate Customer Releases\nKamiwaza’s engineering team is moving toward highly AI-assisted development, which compresses internal cycle times. But Kamiwaza ships an on-prem product with slower, more deliberate customer-facing release cycles. This role lives in that tension. Engineering may be able to build quickly, but each release still needs to be worth the customer’s effort to upgrade. You will help ensure that fast internal development turns into coherent, valuable, low-regret releases.\nCore Mission\nOwn product strategy, discovery, and release discipline for Kamiwaza’s enterprise AI orchestration platform - translating real customer problems into a coherent, outcome-driven roadmap that engineering, sales, marketing, and federal stakeholders can rally around.\nKey Responsibilities\nOwn and evolve the product vision: where the product is going and why.\n\nDefine and maintain a strategy that connects customer problems to business outcomes - revenue, retention, expansion, risk reduction, and time-to-value.\n\nTranslate strategy into outcome-based roadmaps and priorities, not feature lists.\n\nEstablish product principles and decision filters to maintain focus in a dynamic environment.\n\nDrive roadmap clarity across engineering, sales, marketing, support, and leadership.\n\nActively identify and communicate what not to build - maintain a clear view of market antipatterns and short-lived trends.\n\nSpend significant time with customers and prospects through interviews, workflow observation, and feedback loops.\n\nBuild strong working relationships with commercial users and the Fed Team to understand workflows, constraints, and high-value use cases.\n\nIdentify, size, and prioritize problems worth solving using qualitative and quantitative evidence.\n\nRun discovery practices such as prototypes, usability tests, concierge validation, and solution testing before committing major engineering effort.\n\nMaintain a living, ranked problem backlog and defend priorities with evidence.\n\nWork as a true partner to engineering leadership, co-owning outcomes rather than handing off requirements.\n\nCreate clarity on the problem, the customer, and the desired outcome - while engineering owns implementation details and technical design.\n\nFrame problems at the right altitude for an AI-native engineering team: specific enough to guide action, not so prescriptive that it blocks better solutions.\n\nLead problem framing, discovery readouts, solution discussions, and launch readiness conversations.\n\nBe accountable for product clarity, user usefulness, and experience quality - without acting as the sole designer of record.\n\nUse lightweight prototypes, workflow sketches, and AI-assisted mockups to test ideas, accelerate discovery, and communicate intent.\n\nPartner with engineering and design support to refine workflows, edge cases, error handling, and interaction patterns.\n\nBuild trusted relationships with commercial customers and the Fed Team to understand workflows, constraints, and mission-critical use cases.\n\nTranslate Federal-adjacent needs - security, auditability, permissions, deployment models, procurement realities - into product priorities without letting any one category dominate the roadmap.\n\nManage commitments carefully and create alignment with Sales, Marketing, Partnerships, and Fed stakeholders on what is committed, exploratory, or deferred.\n\nOwn the release-planning rhythm from a product perspective, ensuring each release is a coherent bundle of customer value.\n\nOwn the dogfooding program so pre-release builds are used in realistic ways by the right internal teams.\n\nUse on-prem release realities to improve prioritization, sequencing, and launch quality.\n\nPartner with Sales, Marketing, and Partnerships by providing product truth, customer problem definitions, target use cases, proof points, and roadmap context.\n\nSupport discovery motions, demo narratives, and launch readiness with accurate product inputs and reviews.\n\nContribute to release notes, enablement material, and customer-facing explanations as the product subject-matter lead.\n\nAbsorb signal from hardware and channel partners whose field teams surface customer pain points early.\n\nUse AI tools and agents as a force multiplier across research synthesis, note capture, feedback analysis, competitive scanning, draft artifacts, lightweight prototyping, and analytics.\n\nCreate lightweight automations where they create clear leverage.\n\nApply AI responsibly, with strong judgment around security, confidentiality, and quality control.\n\nFirst 180 Days - Mandate for Success\nDays 0-60: Foundation and Discovery\nAchieve deep, hands-on mastery of the Kamiwaza platform - capabilities, APIs, deployment patterns, and differentiators.\n\nBuild strong working relationships with engineering leadership, sales, and the Fed Team.\n\nEstablish a repeatable discovery cadence: customer interviews, workflow observation, and feedback loops with both commercial and federal stakeholders.\n\nAudit the current roadmap and backlog; assess priorities against customer evidence and identify top gaps.\n\nDays 61-120: Strategy and Cadence\nDeliver a clear, communicated product vision and strategy that engineering, sales, marketing, Fed, and partnerships can rally around.\n\nEstablish a healthy operating rhythm with engineering and go-to-market that turns requests into validated opportunities while protecting focus.\n\nLead at least one full discovery cycle from problem identification through solution validation before build commitment.\n\nShape at least one monthly release as a coherent bundle of customer value, with a clear upgrade rationale.\n\nDays 121-180: Scale and Impact\nDemonstrate measurable improvements in customer outcomes: adoption, time-to-value, or retention signals from recent releases.\n\nEstablish a product system that scales through clear prioritization, lightweight artifacts, and transparent decisions.\n\nCreate release-planning discipline where each monthly release is demonstrably worth the customer’s upgrade effort.\n\nEnable go-to-market teams with accurate product truth, target use cases, and roadmap context that improves pipeline and expansion conversations.\n\nExpected Behaviors\nYou will be successful here if you consistently:\nStart with the problem and treat solutions as hypotheses until validated.\n\nSeek truth over harmony - use evidence and surface hard tradeoffs early.\n\nOptimize for outcomes rather than output.\n\nPartner deeply rather than relying on handoffs.\n\nSay no with clarity and empathy when focus requires it.\n\nCommunicate relentlessly through crisp writing, clear decisions, and visible tradeoffs.\n\nUse AI as leverage, not as a substitute for judgment, customer contact, or cross-functional collaboration.\n\nWhat This Role Is Not\nNot a ticket scribe.\n\nNot a feature-factory operator.\n\nNot a project manager whose main value is status tracking.\n\nNot an approval bottleneck for engineering.\n\nMinimum Requirements\nProduct Leadership Experience\n8+ years in product management or product leadership, including strong hands-on IC experience.\n\nProven experience building B2B technical products - platform, infrastructure, developer, data, AI, security, or workflow-heavy products.\n\nStrong track record of continuous discovery and shipping products that improved measurable customer and business outcomes.\n\nExperience as an early or first product hire at a growth-stage company is a strong plus.\n\nTechnical Fluency\nYou do not need to be the deepest expert in every area, but you need enough breadth to ask good questions, understand tradeoffs, and make sound prioritization decisions across:\nInfrastructure and deployment\n\nInference and model management\n\nData systems and knowledge representation\n\nSecurity and authorization\n\nAgentic AI and orchestration\n\nPlatform extensibility and APIs\n\nCore Competencies\nComfort operating in ambiguity, speed, and imperfect information.\n\nAbility to engage directly with customers through interviews, demos, workflow mapping, and priority negotiation.\n\nStrong written and verbal communication - this company runs on writing.\n\nDemonstrated ability to partner deeply with engineering and make sound tradeoff decisions.\n\nStrong product sense, including the ability to use lightweight prototypes or workflow artifacts to accelerate learning.\n\nDemonstrated ability to use AI tooling productively and responsibly in research, synthesis, communication, analysis, and prototyping.\n\nPreferred Qualifications\nExperience with Federal-adjacent requirements and regulated environments.\n\nExperience supporting enterprise sales motions, POVs, pilots, enablement, and roadmap communication.\n\nFamiliarity with product analytics, experimentation, and SQL.\n\nBackground in on-prem, installed, or self-hosted B2B software.\n\nPrior work on developer platforms, infrastructure software, or extensible platforms.\n\nExperience running beta, early-access, or dogfooding programs.\n\nWhy Join Us?\nPurpose & Impact: Be a key contributor to the GenAI revolution, shaping how enterprises adopt next-generation technology.\n\nRemote-First Culture: Based in Colorado, but work from anywhere with the tools and support you need.\n\nExpert Founders with Successful Exits: Our leadership team brings experience and a relentless enthusiasm for GenAI innovation.\n\nHigh-Autonomy Environment: Flat organizational structure, transparent communication, and minimal red tape.\n\nCompetitive Compensation & Equity: Own a piece of our high-potential, well-funded startup.\n\nComprehensive Benefits: Health coverage, remote workspace support, and more.\n\nWho We Are\nWe're a small, driven team building a platform that makes GenAI deployment feel like magic.\n\nOur approach: curious, humble, but relentless.\n\nWe're fun, kind, and exceptional-serious about making an impact but never taking ourselves too seriously.\n\nWe operate with high urgency but think for the long term-action creates clarity.\n\nHow to Apply\nReady to build the foundation of the GenAI revolution? Please include a short write-up of a customer problem you solved end-to-end and a link to any reusable asset or press release that came out of it.\nP.S. If you use GenAI to craft your application, we'll probably find out-and we'd love to learn more about how you did it!\nThis role offers a base salary between $185,000 and $250,000, plus equity and benefits. Actual compensation will reflect an individual’s experience, impact, and location. Our benefits include low-deductible medical plans, flexible time off, and supportive family leave policies.","description_format":"text","description_chars":11463,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Flexible time off","Parental leave"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence","Data Governance","AI Agents"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-12T17:14:29Z"}],"liveness":{"score":8,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.295,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":180,"expected_fill_days":24,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-09-24T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":250000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/kamiwaza-principal-product-managerhead-of-product","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/kamiwaza-principal-product-managerhead-of-product.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-09-24T06:53:05Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers"}}