Senior Product Manager - AI Product

USA TODAY Co., Inc. is a diversified media company dedicated to empowering communities through journalism and digital marketing solutions. They are seeking a Senior Product Manager to lead the development of AI-powered products, collaborating with newsroom teams and engineering to turn prototypes into scalable solutions.

Responsibilities:

• Build lightweight, end‑to‑end AI prototypes using our approved stack (Copilot Studio, Power Automate, OpenAI API, Perplexity API, n8n, Gemini Code Assist) to validate concepts before committing engineering time
• Embed with newsroom and internal teams to observe real workflows, identify painful bottlenecks, and separate high‑leverage problems from nice‑to‑haves
• Run fast, lightweight user research from hallway tests to structured sessions — to put prototypes in front of reporters and editors and synthesize clear, actionable insights
• Identify early product‑market fit signals (adoption, repeat usage, time saved, quality uplift), then make the explicit call to double‑down, pivot, or shut ideas down
• Bring deep empathy for newsroom teams and a sharp editorial sensibility to AI‑powered internal tools that make our journalism more efficient to produce and more impactful when it reaches readers
• Act as the AI subject‑matter partner to core product and engineering teams, translating validated experiments into clear, prioritized, implementation‑ready specs
• Co‑lead discovery with engineering to refine problem statements, clarify edge cases, and align technical tradeoffs, especially around model selection, latency, and safety
• Capture user insights, prototype behavior, and evaluation results in well‑structured discovery tickets that engineering can execute without ambiguity
• Own a slice of USA Today’s AI product portfolio, managing smaller enhancements and maintenance work across live tools used in newsrooms and internal operations
• Triage issues from users, instrumentation, and support channels; quickly identify root causes and drive resolution with the right product, engineering, or platform teams
• Monitor live AI features for quality, safety, and friction signals (e.g., hallucinations, latency, poor completion rates), and proactively propose fixes or experiments

Requirements:

• 5+ years in product management, including at least 2 years directly building or shipping AI/ML or GenAI‑powered products
• Demonstrated ability to build functional AI prototypes yourself (e.g., workflows, bots, internal tools); you don't need to be an engineer, but you can show working systems you created
• Hands‑on experience with at least some of: Copilot Studio, Power Automate, OpenAI API, n8n, or comparable enterprise AI / low‑code platforms
• Strong user research instincts. You can quickly design scrappy studies, get real signals from busy users, and turn it into concrete product decisions
• Excellent spec‑writing and communication skills: you can turn ambiguous, qualitative prototype learnings into sharp requirements, clear scopes, and success metrics
• Proven ability to navigate large, matrixed organizations and build trust with both technical teams and editorial leaders
• High comfort with ambiguity and change; you're energized by defining the roadmap as much as executing it, and you're willing to shut down your own ideas when the data says so
• Experience in media, news, or other content-heavy environments where deadlines, trust, and accuracy matter
• Familiarity with newsroom workflows and reporter/editor pain points, from story discovery through production, packaging, and distribution
• Experience designing or contributing to AI evaluation and governance frameworks (e.g., quality, safety, bias, and performance metrics)
• Working knowledge of prompt design, RAG architectures, and AI‑assisted content workflows at a practical, hands‑on level