Director, AI Product Management

Per Scholas is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing no-cost tech training programs to individuals, empowering them to pursue careers in technology. The Director of AI Product Management will lead requirements analysis and solution evaluation within the AI Tech Solutions team, focusing on understanding user needs and validating proposed solutions throughout the product lifecycle.

Responsibilities:

• Lead structured requirements gathering sessions with functional teams, employing workshops, interviews, contextual inquiry, and other proven elicitation techniques to surface stated and unstated needs
• Translate business challenges into clearly documented requirements artifacts — including user stories, acceptance criteria, process maps, and decision matrices
• Develop and maintain user personas grounded in real usage data and stakeholder input, ensuring product decisions are anchored to defined user needs
• Evaluate candidate solutions against documented requirements using structured criteria (business fit, technical feasibility, user experience, financial impact), producing actionable recommendation briefs
• Serve as the team's quality gate for requirements completeness — ensuring no product moves into development or procurement without validated, well-documented needs
• Design and facilitate solution validation activities (demos, proof-of-concept reviews, pilot evaluations) to confirm that proposed or in-development products meet documented requirements
• Develop and apply evaluation rubrics that weigh business, technical, user experience, and financial considerations in a repeatable and transparent manner
• Partner with technical SMEs to assess feasibility constraints and identify gaps between user needs and proposed solution capabilities
• Track requirement traceability through implementation, flagging scope drift or unmet acceptance criteria
• Manage a portfolio of assigned AI products across the lifecycle, with particular emphasis on the Evaluation and Planning phases
• Support product adoption by ensuring implementation fidelity to documented requirements and by contributing to user-facing documentation and training materials
• Monitor product utilization data and user feedback post-launch, using findings to inform iteration priorities and identify unmet needs
• Engage vendors on product capabilities, roadmap alignment, and issue resolution as it pertains to your assigned products
• Create and maintain standardized templates, workflows, and artifacts for requirements gathering, solution evaluation, and product documentation
• Contribute to the AI Tech Solutions Master SOP and related operational playbooks, ensuring process consistency across the product portfolio
• Produce clear, well-organized deliverables appropriate for diverse audiences — from executive summaries to detailed technical specifications
• Partner with Finance, IT/IS, and departmental stakeholders to validate product business cases and ensure alignment on scope, budget, and timeline
• Collaborate with Senior Directors on the AI Product Management team to ensure requirements rigor is maintained across the broader portfolio
• Support the SVP in preparing materials for roadmap reviews and leadership presentations as needed

Requirements:

• Lead structured requirements gathering sessions with functional teams, employing workshops, interviews, contextual inquiry, and other proven elicitation techniques to surface stated and unstated needs
• Translate business challenges into clearly documented requirements artifacts — including user stories, acceptance criteria, process maps, and decision matrices
• Develop and maintain user personas grounded in real usage data and stakeholder input, ensuring product decisions are anchored to defined user needs
• Evaluate candidate solutions against documented requirements using structured criteria (business fit, technical feasibility, user experience, financial impact), producing actionable recommendation briefs
• Serve as the team's quality gate for requirements completeness — ensuring no product moves into development or procurement without validated, well-documented needs
• Design and facilitate solution validation activities (demos, proof-of-concept reviews, pilot evaluations) to confirm that proposed or in-development products meet documented requirements
• Develop and apply evaluation rubrics that weigh business, technical, user experience, and financial considerations in a repeatable and transparent manner
• Partner with technical SMEs to assess feasibility constraints and identify gaps between user needs and proposed solution capabilities
• Track requirement traceability through implementation, flagging scope drift or unmet acceptance criteria
• Manage a portfolio of assigned AI products across the lifecycle, with particular emphasis on the Evaluation and Planning phases
• Support product adoption by ensuring implementation fidelity to documented requirements and by contributing to user-facing documentation and training materials
• Monitor product utilization data and user feedback post-launch, using findings to inform iteration priorities and identify unmet needs
• Engage vendors on product capabilities, roadmap alignment, and issue resolution as it pertains to your assigned products
• Create and maintain standardized templates, workflows, and artifacts for requirements gathering, solution evaluation, and product documentation
• Contribute to the AI Tech Solutions Master SOP and related operational playbooks, ensuring process consistency across the product portfolio
• Produce clear, well-organized deliverables appropriate for diverse audiences — from executive summaries to detailed technical specifications
• Partner with Finance, IT/IS, and departmental stakeholders to validate product business cases and ensure alignment on scope, budget, and timeline
• Collaborate with Senior Directors on the AI Product Management team to ensure requirements rigor is maintained across the broader portfolio
• Support the SVP in preparing materials for roadmap reviews and leadership presentations as needed
• Methodical and detail-oriented — you bring structure to ambiguity and are energized by turning messy stakeholder input into clean, actionable requirements
• A skilled listener and interviewer — you know how to ask the right questions, probe beneath surface-level requests, and distinguish what users ask for from what they actually need
• Analytically rigorous — you evaluate options through frameworks, not gut feel, and can clearly articulate the rationale behind a recommendation
• Process-minded — you naturally create repeatable systems, templates, and checklists; you're the person who documents what works so it scales
• A steady, reliable collaborator — you build trust through consistency, thoroughness, and follow-through rather than through high-visibility improvisation
• Comfortable with technology — you can learn new tools quickly, conduct hands-on evaluation of software products, and engage meaningfully with technical stakeholders; experience with AI-assisted development (e.g., vibe coding, prompt engineering) is a plus but secondary to your analytical core
• A complement to creative energy — you thrive on a team of big-picture thinkers because you bring the discipline that turns vision into validated, implementable plans
• 5–8 years in a role with significant focus on one or more of the following: Business Analysis or Requirements Engineering, Product Management with emphasis on discovery and evaluation, Technical Project Management (product evaluation and implementation), Solutions Architecture or Solutions Consulting (pre-sales or internal)
• 3+ years conducting formal requirements gathering — workshops, stakeholder interviews, user research — resulting in documented requirements artifacts
• 3+ years evaluating technical products or platforms against defined business and user criteria
• Demonstrated ability to create and maintain process documentation, SOPs, and structured deliverables
• Experience working cross-functionally with non-technical stakeholders to define and prioritize needs
• Strong preference for experience in Education, Workforce Development, or Nonprofit organizations
• Some preference for familiarity with Salesforce, AI/ML tools, or low-code/no-code platforms
• Certifications in Business Analysis (CBAP, CCBA), Product Management, or Agile methodologies are a plus but not required