Staff Product Manager, Technical

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 Principal Product Manager to drive product vision and strategy across the engagements they support. This role is ideal for a deeply experienced product leader who owns the hardest product challenges, serves as the senior product voice in client relationships, and shapes how product management is practiced at Robots & Pencils. 

In this role, you will operate as the principal product authority on a cross-functional team, defining vision, setting delivery standards, and partnering with client executives on product direction. You'll mentor experienced PMs, contribute to practice growth, and bring the depth of experience to navigate complexity, ambiguity, and high-stakes decisions with confidence. 

Why This Role Matters 

Principal Product Managers are how Robots and Pencils turns the hardest client problems into products that actually move the business. On the programs you lead, you set the vision, hold the bar on what ships, and shape how product gets practiced across the firm. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days; that pace holds only when someone owns the strategy with conviction, makes the trade-off calls others escalate, and brings clients along on the bigger bet. 

What You’ll Do 

Craft & Delivery 

• Drive product vision and strategy on the engagements you support, owning direction for the most complex, high-stakes digital products  

• Define product operating models, discovery practices, and delivery standards for the engagement  

• Own the most difficult product challenges — framing problems, aligning stakeholders, and driving resolution at scale  

• Define success frameworks and use data, research, and user insight to evaluate outcomes and shape product direction  

• Identify opportunities to improve how product is practiced across the engagement and contribute those learnings back to R&P  

• Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude to drive efficiency, research synthesis, and product thinking at scale 

Collaboration & Communication 

• Partner with senior leadership and client executives as the principal product advisor, shaping product vision and direction at the engagement level  

• Represent product thinking at the leadership level, influencing how strategy, delivery, and technology decisions are made  

• Lead the most complex stakeholder forums, workshops, and executive-level discussions 

Leadership & Influence 

• Define and champion product delivery standards and best practices on the engagements you support  

• Mentor experienced PMs, helping them grow their product judgment, strategic thinking, and client impact  

• Own the most difficult product decisions, serving as the senior product decision-maker on complex tradeoffs  

• Contribute to business development, proposals, and the growth of R&P's product management practice 

What You’ll Bring 

• 10+ years of experience in product management, with a strong record in consultative or enterprise environments  

• Demonstrated track record of defining product vision and strategy at the program or portfolio level for complex, high-stakes digital initiatives, with measurable business impact 

• Expert-level client advisory skills and experience influencing at the executive level  

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

• Track record of mentoring senior product managers and shaping team-level PM practices  

• Strong cross-functional leadership and the ability to align engineering, design, strategy, and business at scale  

• Experience defining product metrics, success frameworks, and iterative delivery models  

• Deep applied experience with AI tools to drive efficiency, research synthesis, and product thinking at scale (e.g., Claude)  

• Deep consulting or professional services delivery experience, with the gravitas to act as the primary product voice with senior client stakeholders and the discipline to deliver under client constraints 

• Experience contributing to business development, proposals, or practice growth is a plus 

• A formed point of view on how AI is reshaping product management, with the credibility to influence both client and internal thinking 

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.