Forward Deployed Product Manager

About Fractional AI

Fractional AI builds bespoke GenAI software to transform businesses. We work with customers like Zapier, Airbyte, and Change.org to build their high-impact gen AI applications. We are profitable, scaling fast, and focused on solving the hardest problems in applied AI.

Our customers come to us with ambitious, often fuzzy goals — make content moderation faster, customer service cheaper and better, unlock new integrations, automate the workflows no one else can touch. Your job is to turn those goals into AI-powered solutions that actually work in the real world—and to own the journey from first conversation → live system → real business impact.

This is a forward-deployed, full-stack customer role:

• Part engagement manager (you’re the primary face of Fractional to the client)
• Part product manager (you decide what we build and why)
• Part delivery/program manager (you run the execution motion end-to-end)
• Part “do whatever it takes” operator (you jump into the gaps to keep things moving)

What you’ll do:

• Own the customer relationship end-to-end
  Act as the customer’s day-to-day strategic partner and primary point of contact.
• Join early-stage calls, run discovery, synthesize feedback, and keep customers aligned on what we’re building and why.
• Build trusted relationships across all levels of an organization, setting clear expectations and being candid about tradeoffs.

Shaping What We Build And Why

• Define product builds, refine and sequence scope, and identify the highest-leverage use cases.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into crisp problem statements, user journeys, and success metrics.
• Work with customers to define what “success” actually means—then design experiments, KPIs, and dashboards to prove it.

Turn messy problems into shipped solutions

• Translate ambiguous customer needs into clear requirements, PRDs, and plans for engineers.
• Shape workflows, edge cases, evaluation criteria, and deployment success metrics for AI-powered systems.
• Sit in the loop with engineering: prioritization, tradeoffs, testing, evals, and launches.

Drive execution across multiple AI builds

• Run the day-to-day execution rhythm: stand-ups, planning, check-ins, risk/issue tracking, and runway management.
• Coordinate between customers, engineers, designers, and other Fractional teammates to keep projects unblocked and moving.
• Own timelines and delivery quality—getting projects across the finish line consistently and calmly, even when things change late.

Help create demand, not just fulfill it

• Jump on early, messy conversations where the “project” is still a vague idea.
• Help founders and sales tease out real pain, sketch solution approaches live, and scope engagements that we can actually deliver.
• Spot expansion opportunities and help turn successful deployments into broader, long-term partnerships.

Drive adoption and long-term impact

• Work with client teams on rollout, enablement, and change management—so the systems you build actually get used.
• Monitor performance, gather qualitative and quantitative feedback, and push for improvements where they matter most.
• Bring back insights and patterns that inform Fractional’s internal playbooks, tooling, and product direction.

Bring judgment and clarity

• When requirements are fuzzy, data is messy, or customers change course, you’ll break the problem down and guide everyone toward the highest-impact solution.
• Be the person in the room who can say, “Here’s what we’re actually trying to do, here’s what we know, here’s the plan.”

What you bring:

Customer-facing, High-stakes Experience

• You’ve led projects where customers were under pressure, stakeholders weren’t aligned, and the path wasn’t obvious.
• You’re comfortable pushing back, reframing the problem, and holding the line on quality.

Real Product & Delivery Experience

• You’ve built and shipped products or services in partnership with engineers and designers—ideally across multiple cycles.
• You know how to run an execution rhythm (stand-ups, planning, tracking, retros) without turning it into process theater.

Structured problem-solving and communication

• You ask good questions, structure chaos, and turn ambiguity into a plan.
• You can go from…