Blackford Technologies are looking for a Senior Product Leader to own and shape the future of our flagship AI data platform from the ground up. This is a rare opportunity to define and build a category defining product that will compete directly with established players in the enterprise data platform space. A product that is is more flexible, developer friendly, and built for modern data andAI workflows. You will work at the intersection of data engineering, AI/ML and enterprise software shaping a product that will power critical decision making for some of the worlds largest organisations.
You will work closely with our engineering, design, marketing and customer facing teams to define product strategy and deliver exceptional experiences for users.
We offer the opportunity to be involved in, and influence the strategy to build a product business from the ground up. A flexible work environment with a culture of learning, collaboration and impact.
The ideal candidate has demonstrable experience building enterprise AI data technology platforms, and have a strong technical and commercial understanding of competitors in this domain (Palantir, Databricks, Dataiku, C3Ai). However, what will really help candidates standout will be examples of them creating real platforms and businesses in this space.
This role reports directly to the Head of Product and will the founding PM for this initiatve with significant autonomy and impact.
Requirements
Own and Product Vision and Strategy for our AI data platform, defining what we build and how we differentiate from competitors
Lead deep competitive analysis and customer research to identify gaps in existing solutions and opportunities for innovation
Define the product roadmap across data integration, transformation pipelines, orchestration, governance and AI/ML capabilities
Partner closely with engineering leadership to guide them with architectural and technical decisions that will scale to enterprise requirements
Engage directly with enterprise customers to understand complex workflows, pain points and requirements. Lead the discovery effort by collaborating with market research, marketing, and engineering to identify strategic opportunities
Define clear product requirements and partnering with engineering (technical build), marketing (GTM strategy, and sales enablement's), design (exceptional user experience) and other leadership stakeholders to bring products through the innovation funnel from concept to launch
Establish and monitor key metrics, defining success criteria, and iterating based on user feedback and performance data
Communicate product vision, strategy and progress to the broader team, and leadership
12+ Years of product development and management experience with time spent in technology startup environments
A track record in building and scaling AI data platforms, data infrastructure, or enterprise data products, or AI/ML product platforms
Strong understanding of modern data stacks, including data warehouses, data lakes, ETL/ELT pipelines, orchestration and AI & data governance
Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model deployment, feature stores and MLOps concepts
Experience leading products through multiple stages of maturity, from early validation to scale
Experience building and developing AI data products and platforms that go head to head with category leaders (Foundry, Databricks, Snowflake, Dataiku)
Comfortable in a deep technical environment with a broad, cross functional team to drive product Agentic based products, applications, and platforms. Technical depth to engage with data engineers, platform architects and CTOs on technical requirements and trade-offs is essential
Strong enterprise product experience including understanding of complex sales cycles, procurement, security/compliance requirements
Strong strategic thinking with ability to define product vision and translate it into actionable roadmaps
Excellent communication and presentation skills with experience influencing C-Level customers and internal executives
Experience building products for technical users (data scientist, ML engineers, platform engineers, developers) and business users
Self-starter - This is a small team environment we need doers not manager. Collaborative - we have a great team of people, we only want people who can work across roles and functional boundaries
Nice to have
Direct experience with Palatir Foundry, Databricks or similar platforms
Background as a Data Engineer, ML Engineer or Software engineer
Experience in industries with complex data needs (Healthcare, FS, Supply Chain etc)
Understanding of real-time data processing, streaming architectures, or event driven systems
Experience with graph data bases, knowledge graphs, or semantic layers
Understanding and experience of different licensing and pricing models
