Director of Applied AI Product:
The Director of AI Product role at Acceleration Partners is a remote, work-from-home position, as are all roles at AP, a structure central to our culture and our vision for a better balance of work and life. Some travel may be required for internal meetings, conferences, and events.
The Role:
Something just changed about what a single person can build, and we intend to be the agency that puts it to work first. Acceleration Partners is the recognized leader in partnership marketing, built on more than a decade of proprietary data and technology our industry cannot match, and we are now putting applied AI at the center of how we turn that advantage into measurable outcomes for our clients.
We are looking for a Director of AI Product to own how we build. We have a clear thesis about where this is going and what our clients need, and a working, data-connected platform that already proves part of it. What we want now is a peer who is deeper in this technology than we are, someone who can pressure-test that thesis, tell us where it is wrong, and drive how we bring it to life. This is not a role that manages AI features from a distance. You will be in the tools every day, prototyping, building agentic workflows, and shipping against real client data in weeks rather than quarters, and you will help decide what we build ourselves and what we stop outsourcing. You will own the technical approach and the build from day one, and the product roadmap and vision increasingly as the platform matures. We are among the first to apply AI at this depth in partnership marketing, and this role sits at the center of that work.
This is a highly cross-functional role. You will work closely with engineering, data, client services, agency operations, and strategy teams to translate the needs of our clients and our teams into product that delivers measurable value, while keeping our people focused on the judgment and strategy that technology cannot replace. This role reports to and partners directly with the Chief Strategy Officer.
Top 5 Responsibilities:
Product Direction and Judgment
- Pressure-test and help shape the product thesis, bringing enough depth in AI and modern build practices to tell us what is real, what is not yet, and what we are missing.
- Execute the established direction, turning it into shipped product that delivers measurable value, and take on increasing ownership of roadmap and vision as the platform matures.
Hands-On Product Creation
- Move concepts into working software quickly, prototyping and shipping in weeks rather than quarters, building the tools and agentic workflows that do real work against real client data rather than handing specifications to others and waiting.
- Bring AI fluency to every part of the product lifecycle, not just what gets built, but how you discover, prioritize, prototype, and validate. AI is your working method, not a feature category you manage.
- Partner with engineering and data teams to take prototypes from early build to secure, reliable production, holding a high bar for what is ready to put in front of a client.
Product Discovery and User Understanding
- Maintain a deep, continuously updated understanding of the user landscape across client teams and internal users, including how they work today, where current tools fall short, and what a better experience looks like in practice.
- Validate assumptions before committing to build. Identify where a solution will not work for a segment of users before it ships, whether due to customization needs, workflow constraints, or adoption barriers, and have a plan to address those gaps in the product itself or in how it gets rolled out.
- Continuously gather feedback from client teams and internal users after shipping, and feed those signals back into how the roadmap evolves. Discovery does not stop at launch.
Technical Authority and Build Strategy
- Serve as a genuine technical peer to engineering and data, owning the technical approach, making the architecture and build-versus-buy calls, and holding the line on what is and is not production-ready.
- Own how we build, what we develop in-house versus what we source from partners, and drive that mix toward speed, quality, and cost as our own capability grows.
- Keep the work coherent from end to end, so that what is prototyped carries cleanly into production.
Outcome Ownership and Measurement
- Define and own success in terms of client outcomes, such as retention, revenue per account, and win rates, rather than internal usage metrics.
- Continuously measure, iterate, and improve the real business impact of what ships.
Adoption and Enablement
- Design and drive adoption so the platform integrates naturally into how client services, strategy, and agency operations teams already work, not as a separate tool they have to remember to use, but as a capability woven into their daily workflows.
Operationalization and Rollout Communication
- Own the operationalization of what ships. That means clear rollout communication, documentation, and enablement materials that set client services and operations teams up for success, not just an announcement that a feature is live. The detail work of a rollout is not someone else’s job.
- Run a disciplined communication rhythm around rollouts and changes: what is changing, when it lands, who is affected, and what teams need to do differently, shared early enough that ops and enablement teams can prepare rather than react.
- Keep leadership and cross-functional teams current on the roadmap, priorities, and an honest view of what is ready versus what is still in build, so no one is surprised by a launch.
What Success Looks Like:
By 6 Months
- You will have shipped meaningful new functionality into the hands of client teams, built on real data, and earned the trust of our engineering and data teams as a technical peer.
- You will have delivered at least one measurable, client-facing outcome, and given us a sharper, verified read on what is real in our roadmap and what is not.
- Your rollouts will have set the standard for operational communication: client services, operations, and enablement teams will have known what was changing, when, and what it meant for them, with documentation and enablement in place before launch, not after.
By 1 Year
- You will have taken on increasing ownership of the platform roadmap and the build, with clear business impact across client strategy, insight, and internal efficiency.
- The platform will be embedded in how AP teams work every day, not a separate tool they visit, but a capability woven into client delivery, strategy, and operations. We will build more of it ourselves, depend less on outside vendors, and the path from idea to production will no longer rest on any single person.
Qualities of the Ideal Candidate:
Important: Let us be direct about who this is for. The best product people right now are the ones who have realized their job fundamentally changed, and are more energized than threatened by it. But the change is not just about building faster. It is about bringing rigorous discovery, sharp user understanding, and real organizational follow-through to a platform that has to work for the people using it every day. This role is not for a vibe coder who thinks in features, or a visionary who hands off execution. It is for a director-level operator who is fluent in AI, serious about product craft, and knows how to make things stick inside a real organization.
- You have a track record of shipping product that people actually use. You understand that the distance between a working prototype and a workflow people rely on every day is where most product work actually lives, and you know how to close it.
- You are as comfortable with a stakeholder conversation and a discovery interview as you are with a prototype. You know shipping something real takes both vision and the unglamorous work of making it stick, and you are energized by both.
- You treat the operational side of shipping as part of the product. The rollout plan, the release note, the documentation, and the enablement session are work you own, not chores you hand off, and the teams on the receiving end of your launches are never surprised.
- You go deep on the user landscape before you build. You know how to identify where a solution will break down for a segment of users before it ships, and you have a plan for that gap, whether it gets solved in the product or in how it gets rolled out.
- Speed energizes you rather than worrying you. You prototype fast, get something real in front of users, and refine from there. Long planning phases and multi-quarter release cycles are not how you think.
- You live in AI tools and use them every day, not because it is on trend, but because you have seen what they make possible and you intend to work that way. You build in Claude Code, you move fast, and you ship in weeks what used to take a team a quarter.
- You have built agents and agentic systems yourself, not just read about them, and you understand the technology well enough to tell a good bet from a bad one.
- Technically fearless, at home in data and modern software, deep enough to own the architecture and the build-versus-buy calls even without a traditional engineering title.
- Real conviction about where this is going, paired with the candor to tell us when we are wrong. We are hiring you partly to be the person who can.
Minimum Qualifications and Skills:
- Demonstrated experience building products with modern AI tools, including hands-on work with AI agents and agentic frameworks. Be prepared to show what you have personally built, not only describe it.
- A director-level track record in product, with real ownership of roadmap, discovery, and delivery end to end. You have shipped products that people adopted and that drove measurable business outcomes, not just features that got launched.
- Working fluency with data (SQL and modern data warehouses) and contemporary web technologies, deep enough to build prototypes and make real technical tradeoffs, not only evaluate them.
- A history of owning measurable business outcomes, not only shipping features.
- Demonstrated experience operationalizing product rollouts: communication plans, release notes, documentation, and enablement materials that set operations and client-facing teams up for success. Be prepared to show examples you personally produced.
- Excellent communication skills, with the standing to influence executives and engineers alike.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in affiliate, influencer, partnership, retail media, or marketing technology.
- Founder, early-stage, or technical-leadership background.
- Experience with data platforms, analytics tooling, or BI products (for example Power BI, data warehouses, reporting pipelines).
- Built or contributed to open-source AI or agent tooling.
- Have stood up production software or driven a build in-house, not only managed vendors who do.
Why Acceleration Partners?
Acceleration Partners is the world’s largest and first-to-market Partnership Marketing Agency creating and nurturing partnerships that drive exceptional measurable outcomes for their clients. Managing clients in 40+ countries, AP’s global team of 300+ focuses on data-driven strategies that connect brands to the right consumers through affiliate and influencer All of our work is supported by APVision, our proprietary technology suite which leverages the largest dataset of any agency in the Partnership Marketing agency ecosystem. Serving over 200 brands—including household names like Amazon, Apple, Target, Google, Marriott, Coinbase, and Burberry—AP’s diversified team is creating what’s next in the industry by building high-performing partnership marketing programs. As the only truly integrated global partnerships agency, AP prides itself on being at the cutting edge of industry developments and leveraging proven expertise to deliver unique solutions for brands seeking sustainable growth..
AP Perks and Benefits:
- 100% remote work for everyone
- Group medical, dental, and vision coverage insurance (with opt-out benefits)
- 401K with matching
- Open Paid Time Off
- Summer and Holiday company-wide shutdown days in July and December
- Volunteer and Birthday Time Off
- Focus Fridays
- Paid Parental Leave Benefits
- Wellness, Technology, and Education Allowances
- Paid sabbatical leaves, donation matching, and more
Salary: The target base salary range is $120-160K depending on location and experience.
Benefits may vary based on employment status or country location.
Acceleration Partners is committed to a diverse workforce and we are an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate applicants regardless of an individual’s age, race, color, gender, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or veteran status.
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