Staff Product Manager, Technical

Staff Product Manager, Technical 

Location: Remote in US or Canada

Company Overview 

Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We're all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there. We’ve earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship. 

Position Overview 

We're looking for a Staff Product Manager, Technical to define product strategy and lead delivery across major client engagements. This role is ideal for a seasoned product leader who can own the full product lifecycle, build trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders, and bring both strategic vision and hands-on delivery discipline to the engagements they support. 

In this role, you will work as the senior product voice on a cross-functional team, setting direction, driving alignment, and owning outcomes from discovery through delivery. You'll partner closely with client leadership, mentor other PMs, and bring the experience and judgment to navigate the most complex product challenges. 

Why This Role Matters 

Staff Product Managers are the bridge between what the client needs and what the team builds at Robots and Pencils. On the engagements you lead, you set the direction, frame the right problems, and make the trade-off calls that decide whether the product is great or just done. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days; that pace holds only when someone keeps the customer in the room, sweats the details, and refuses to let speed beat clarity. 

What You’ll Do 

Craft & Delivery 

• Define product strategy and vision for major client engagements, setting direction in alignment with client goals and business outcomes  

• Own the product roadmap end-to-end, driving prioritization across business value, technical constraints, and delivery timelines  

• Lead complex discovery and problem framing with senior client stakeholders, ensuring the right problems are defined before solutions are built  

• Define product success metrics and use data to evaluate outcomes, inform priorities, and drive continuous improvement  

• Drive cross-functional alignment across engineering, design, delivery, and strategy to keep complex engagements moving  

• Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude to drive product discovery, research synthesis, and documentation at speed 

Collaboration & Communication 

• Build and maintain trusted advisor relationships with client leadership, serving as a reliable strategic partner on product direction  

• Communicate strategy, tradeoffs, and recommendations clearly and confidently at the executive level  

• Lead complex stakeholder working sessions, workshops, and decision-making forums across large, multi-stakeholder organizations 

Leadership & Influence 

• Establish product delivery standards and practices on the engagements you support  

• Mentor senior and mid-level PMs, helping them grow their product thinking, client skills, and delivery impact  

• Act as a technical escalation point on complex product, scope, and prioritization challenges 

What You’ll Bring 

• 7+ years of experience in product management, with a strong consultative background  

• Demonstrated ability to define product strategy and vision for complex digital engagements  

• Deep experience leading discovery, roadmapping, and delivery across multi-stakeholder environments  

• Strong executive communication and client advisory skills  

• Track record of driving cross-functional alignment and influencing without authority  

• Experience defining and tracking product success metrics  

• High accountability, ownership, and follow-through  

• Proficiency with product tools across discovery, roadmapping, and delivery (e.g., Jira, Productboard, Amplitude, Miro)  

• Deep applied experience with AI tools to drive product discovery, research synthesis, and documentation at speed (e.g., Claude)  

• Prior exposure to building or shipping AI/ML products 

• Consulting or professional services delivery background 

• A point of view on where AI is changing product management — and an appetite to keep moving up that learning curve as the firm does 

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, even informally — and the appetite to grow into leading AI product work over time 

• 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. 

The below range reflects the range of possible compensation for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future. An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, seniority, geographic location, performance, shift, travel requirements, sales or revenue-based metrics, any collective bargaining agreements, and business or organizational needs. The salary range for this role is $160.000 USD - $220.000 USD ($130.000 CAD - $160.000 CAD).  We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees. 
 
An offer of employment may be conditional upon successful completion of a background check in accordance with local legislation and our candidate privacy notice. Your current employer will not be contacted without your permission.  We are committed to ensuring equal employment opportunities for all job applicants and employees. Employment decisions are based upon job-related reasons regardless of an applicant's race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, marital status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other status protected by law.