Principal Product Strategist, AI Engagement Leader

Back in 2012, we were a group of engineers and designers who decided we wanted to build things, so we did. Able started as an engineering and product hub building for a portfolio of early-stage startups. We built many relationships while developing products that were thoughtful, effective, and genuinely useful. But, since then, we’ve grown… and so has our ambition.

Now, we’re entering our next chapter, defined by applied AI. AI is a powerful force in the end-to-end software development cycle, and we’re creating practices that allow us to deliver software fast and more effectively than traditional approaches, creating meaningful value for our partners. Today, our builder mindset is driving us to become an AI-native organization across every function. We’re still evolving, and that’s part of the opportunity. If you want to build, learn, and tackle challenges alongside an ambitious team, let’s build together.

About the Role at Able

Able is an AI-native product engineering firm. We partner with organizations that need to move faster, use AI more effectively, and build products that reflect how their teams and customers actually work. We work alongside our clients - embedded, fast, and outcome-obsessed - across industries and stages of product maturity.

This role sits at the center of those engagements. The Principal Product Strategist, AI Engagement Leader will lead discovery, frame opportunities, align decision-makers, define the path to value, and remain accountable as recommendations become product decisions and product decisions become shipped software. The role also helps shape how Able itself works: improving the use of AI across strategy, design, and delivery, and creating a repeatable product discipline that strengthens every engagement.

What Success Looks Like

• Clients view this person as a trusted senior partner who can make complex, ambiguous work feel clear and actionable.

• Able produces more consistent, rigorous discovery, product strategy, workflow analysis, and recommendation artifacts across engagements.

• AI opportunities are evaluated pragmatically - with attention to user value, workflow readiness, data, governance, feasibility, evaluation, and change management.

• The current PM and design team receive stronger coaching, clearer standards, and better tools to do exceptional work.

• Able has a practical roadmap for the future product strategy and design practice, including capabilities, hiring needs, and AI-enabled ways of working.

Experience

• 10+ years of relevant experience in product strategy, product management, design strategy, consulting, agency work, startup leadership, or a closely related product leadership role; 10+ years preferred.

• 2+ years leading product and/or design work through direct management, functional leadership, practice-building responsibility, or leadership of complex multidisciplinary engagements.

• Strong consulting acumen, including leading client discovery, facilitating workshops, shaping recommendations, and building credibility with senior stakeholders.

• Experience supporting pre-sales and account growth: participating in early client conversations, framing engagement approaches, contributing to proposals or SOWs, estimating work, and presenting a clear point of view.

• Demonstrated ownership across the full product lifecycle, from ambiguous opportunity framing and discovery through build, launch, measurement, and iteration.

• Hands-on experience designing, validating, or shipping AI-enabled products, agents, automations, internal tools, or AI-assisted workflows - with practical judgment about where AI creates leverage and where it introduces risk or unnecessary complexity.

• Proficiency using AI applications to improve product work, including research, synthesis, workflow analysis, prototyping, requirements, documentation, and delivery practices.

• Experience partnering directly with product design, software engineering, and AI engineering teams; able to engage in technical feasibility, architecture, data, evaluation, and governance conversations without needing to be the primary engineer.

• Proven ability to translate messy and sometimes conflicting stakeholder input into a clear problem definition, prioritized opportunity set, and defensible recommendation.

• Comfort building lightweight business cases and articulating value using incomplete data, explicit assumptions, proxies, and outcome-oriented metrics.

• Excellent written and verbal communication, including client-facing synthesis briefs, opportunity maps, PRDs, roadmaps, and executive recommendation decks.

• Startup, consulting, agency, venture studio, or similarly entrepreneurial operating experience strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Client and Engagement Leadership

• Build and maintain trusted client relationships, serving as a senior thought partner to product, business, technical, and executive stakeholders.

• Lead discovery on client engagements: stakeholder interviews, workflow and process analysis, opportunity framing, AI use-case mapping, value articulation, and prioritized recommendations.

• Bring structure to ambiguous problem spaces by surfacing assumptions, clarifying decisions, making risks and tradeoffs visible, and creating shared alignment around the path forward.

• Facilitate executive workshops and working sessions that move teams from disconnected input to clear priorities, product direction, and next steps.

• Develop clear, persuasive written artifacts - including briefs, opportunity maps, product strategy documents, PRDs, roadmaps, and client-facing recommendation decks.

Product Ownership, Delivery, and AI Product Strategy

• Maintain product ownership through build and implementation: translating strategy into buildable work, supporting sprint planning and backlog decisions, and keeping delivery grounded in client outcomes.

• Partner closely with product design, engineering, and AI engineering to validate feasibility, shape product and architecture tradeoffs, and make practical sequencing decisions.

• Define outcome hypotheses, success measures, and learning plans; help clients make decisions that balance user value, business impact, feasibility, governance, and time-to-value.

• Help clients identify, evaluate, and design AI-enabled products and workflows, including agentic experiences, automation opportunities, human-in-the-loop decisions, evaluation approaches, privacy, security, reliability, and change-management needs.

• Use AI as an extension of the product practice - accelerating research, synthesis, prototyping, documentation, and delivery workflows while maintaining quality and judgment.

Pre-Sales, Account Growth, and Practice Building

• Support pre-sales efforts by joining early client conversations, helping frame opportunities, developing engagement approaches, contributing to proposals and SOWs, estimating work, and presenting Able's point of view.

• Identify opportunities to deepen client relationships and expand impact while protecting trust, delivery quality, and a clear understanding of scope and outcomes.

• Build and evolve Able's product strategy and design discipline: establish methods, standards, AI-enabled workflows, artifacts, and operating practices that enable exceptional client work today and scale with the company over time.

• Provide functional leadership, coaching, and quality oversight for Able's current PM and design team; establish expectations for strong discovery, strategy, design collaboration, and delivery.

• Help define the future structure, capabilities, hiring needs, onboarding approach, and internal tooling roadmap for an AI-native product and design practice.

• Contribute to the strategy and roadmap for Able's internal platform, tooling, and operating systems when those efforts will strengthen client delivery or the broader practice.

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