Technical Product Owner

AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation.

At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived. 

We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD. 

We’re hiring a Technical Product Owner with a strong technical and delivery background to lead one of the USA squads supporting our overall agentic product platform. This role starts with a heavier emphasis on scrum leadership, delivery execution, and technical coordination within a platform team that is still being built out. Over time, we expect the role to expand into deeper Technical Product Owner responsibility as the platform, product model, and external offering mature. Our longer-term direction includes SaaS/PaaS-style productization and enterprise deployment patterns where customers may eventually run the product in their own secure environment with isolated data and integrations, but that is a future direction rather than the immediate operating model.

The ideal candidate brings strong technical depth and has been close enough to the work to validate the architecture, technical details, and execution required to deliver high-quality stories. They should have a hands-on builder background, be able to work credibly with engineers, and know how to hold a team accountable to delivery outcomes while driving against strategic initiatives. This role requires someone with a solid product mindset who can connect technical execution to business value, priorities, and roadmap direction. Practical AI product experience is ideal, but it is not a deal breaker for someone with the right technical foundation, delivery leadership, and product instincts.

Key Responsibilities

• Mandatory: Strong external customer-facing SaaS engineering background and prior experience working as a Technical Product Owner (TPO) or closely related delivery/product lead in a SaaS product company, supporting multi-tenant or PaaS-style products sold on subscription to external B2B customers.
• Start by leading the USA squad with a heavier emphasis on scrum leadership, delivery execution, sprint rigor, and technical coordination while the platform and offering continue to mature.
• Serve as the primary owner for squad-level execution, ensuring stories are well-defined, technically grounded, and aligned to roadmap priorities, customer needs, and business goals.
• Bring enough technical depth and hands-on builder experience to validate architecture, technical requirements, acceptance criteria, and the execution details required for high-quality delivery.
• Work closely with product leadership, engineers, architects, and design partners to translate strategic priorities into epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, and sequenced sprint goals.
• Hold the squad accountable to delivery outcomes, technical integrity, and release readiness in partnership with product and engineering leads.
• Act as a primary product counterpart for distributed delivery, collaborating closely with India squad partners and other global engineering stakeholders to keep work aligned across regions.
• Communicate product context, business value, customer impact, and success criteria to the team while making clear trade-off decisions on scope, sequencing, and readiness.
• Partner with leadership to define and track KPIs, adoption metrics, and outcome measures for the capabilities owned by the USA squad.
• Ensure the team understands how external clients may eventually evaluate, buy, implement, and use the product, including implications for onboarding, configuration, integration, supportability, and future productization.
• Collaborate directly with business leaders, Customer Success, Sales, and IT stakeholders to refine requirements, validate priorities, and incorporate market and customer feedback into planning.
• Lead requirements elaboration, business process detailing, and solution design sessions for features owned by the USA squad.
• Support UAT planning, validation, defect resolution, release readiness, and post-release feedback loops for externally released product features.
• Help coordinate dependencies across USA and India squads so work can move efficiently without losing product intent, technical quality, or accountability.
• Grow over time into deeper Technical Product Owner responsibility as the platform, product model, and external offering mature.

Qualifications

• Mandatory: Strong SaaS engineering background, prior experience as a Technical Product Owner / Product Owner, and prior Scrum Master experience.
• Demonstrated experience working closely enough to engineering to validate technical details, challenge weak story definition, and guide execution toward quality outcomes.
• Hands-on builder background or equivalent engineering-adjacent execution experience that provides credibility in technical discussions related to architecture, APIs, integrations, data isolation, and non-functional requirements.
• Experience leading teams through structured delivery, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, execution follow-through, and delivery accountability.
• Certified Scrum Master (CSM) or equivalent is preferred.
• 8+ years of total experience, with 3+ years leading AI, software, or technically complex product delivery efforts.
• Strong understanding of Agile principles and frameworks.
• Excellent communication, prioritization, and problem-solving skills.
• Practical AI product experience is ideal, especially experience translating AI/ML capabilities into customer-facing features and measurable outcomes, but it is not a deal breaker.

Proven Experience:

• Translating business priorities into sprint goals, user stories, and actionable delivery plans
• Backlog refinement and sprint planning collaboration
• Cross-functional collaboration with business leaders, IT, domain managers, and customer-facing teams (Sales / Customer Success / Support)
• Driving alignment across multiple business areas in support of externally delivered SaaS / PaaS offerings or emerging product models
• Coordinating delivery across distributed teams and time zones without losing accountability or momentum

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Strong technical owner who can connect architecture, story quality, and execution details to delivery outcomes
• Hands-on builder mindset with the judgment to validate what is required technically, not just manage process around it
• Solid product mindset that connects technical execution to business value, priorities, and strategic initiatives
• Comfortable leading through delivery accountability and cross-functional coordination, not just backlog administration
• Able to make clear trade-off decisions and maintain momentum in ambiguous environments
• Motivated by building real products and delivering outcomes with a team
• A curious person who enjoys novel problem spaces
• Someone who is always learning and brings the right attitude and perspective to lead by example and inspiration inside of a positive and delivery focused team of amazing people
• Someone who can demonstrate the ability to use AI to build AI and has experience with Cursor

USD 160,000 - 180,000 a year

The compensation range indicated in this posting reflects the On-Target Earnings (“OTE”) for this role, which includes a base salary and any applicable target bonus amount. This OTE range may vary based on the candidate’s relevant experience, qualifications, and geographic location.  

Why AHEAD:

Through our daily work and internal groups like Moving Women AHEAD and RISE AHEAD, we value and benefit from diversity of people, ideas, experience, and everything in between.

We fuel growth by stacking our office with top-notch technologies in a multi-million-dollar lab, by encouraging cross department training and development, sponsoring certifications and credentials for continued learning.

USA Employment Benefits include: 

- Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance 

- 401(k) 

- Paid company holidays 

- Paid time off 

- Paid parental and caregiver leave 

- Plus more! See benefits https://www.aheadbenefits.com/ for additional details. 

Use of AI:

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, assessing responses, or to capture recordings and create transcriptions or summaries during interviews. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans.

If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please refer to the Candidate Privacy Notice or contact us at privacy@ahead.com. 

You may opt-out of the review or analysis of your application and resume by AI tools by using the General Application. Please include the role you wish to apply for in the Additional Information field. You may also choose to opt-out of recording and transcription at any time, including after joining an interview.  Candidates will not be penalized for choosing to opt-out.