Research Product Manager AP Intelligence Job Details | Associated Press

The Associated Press is an independent global news organization developing AP Intelligence, a machine-readable intelligence layer built from verified journalism, structured data and AI infrastructure. The Research Product Manager will lead 0-to-1 research and product definition by investigating ambiguous questions, testing hypotheses, evaluating data and prototypes, working with customers, and translating findings into product decisions and requirements.

Responsibilities:

• Lead research into ambiguous product questions across event intelligence, structured news data, knowledge graphs, real-time information and AI systems
• Turn questions such as “What makes an event important?” or “How should we measure whether a signal is reliable and useful?” into hypotheses, experiments and evaluation frameworks
• Work hands-on with AP datasets and product outputs, using tools such as SQL, Python, notebooks, LLMs and lightweight prototypes to test ideas
• Design benchmarks and evaluation methods for dimensions such as accuracy, timeliness, confidence, relevance and usefulness
• Identify patterns that can become scalable schemas, taxonomies, scoring systems and product capabilities
• Translate research into clear product concepts, requirements and recommendations engineering teams can build
• Define how concepts such as event importance, impact, velocity, provenance and confidence become useful AP Intelligence capabilities
• Partner with engineering and applied AI teams to identify failure modes, improve product quality and move promising ideas from prototype to production
• Use evidence to recommend which ideas should advance, change or stop and to inform AP Intelligence priorities
• Work directly with prospective customers and design partners to understand workflows, test emerging concepts and determine where AP Intelligence creates meaningful value
• Assess not only whether a capability is technically possible, but whether customers will integrate it, rely on it and pay for it
• Partner closely with journalists, engineers, AI teams, commercial teams and senior leaders
• Synthesize editorial, technical, customer and commercial perspectives into clear decisions and communicate complex ideas to technical and nontechnical audiences

Requirements:

• 6+ years of relevant professional experience, including significant experience in product management, data products, AI/ML products, applied research, search/information systems or another highly analytical product environment
• A strong track record of taking ambiguous problems and independently turning them into structured questions, experiments and product recommendations
• Exceptional analytical and conceptual thinking, with an ability to find patterns in complex information and develop clear points of view from incomplete evidence
• Strong technical and data fluency. You do not need to be a production engineer, but should be comfortable exploring datasets, interrogating outputs and building lightweight analyses or prototypes
• Familiarity with structured or semi-structured data and areas such as APIs, taxonomies, ontologies, knowledge graphs, search, retrieval or related information systems
• Working knowledge of modern AI systems and concepts, including LLMs, RAG, embeddings, information retrieval, structured outputs and model evaluation
• Strong product and customer judgment, including the ability to distinguish an interesting research problem from a capability customers will use and value
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and comfort working across engineering, AI, journalism, commercial teams and senior leadership
• Experience with AI/ML products, knowledge graphs, search/retrieval, real-time or event-driven data, intelligence platforms, AI evaluation, financial/risk/geopolitical information products, or early-stage 0→1 environments is especially relevant