Vice President of Product Innovation (Rustici) US, Nashville, Remote

We’re gearing up for our “next big thing” and are looking for a VP of Product Innovation to serve as the strategic and tactical engine driving our next generation of product innovation. Reporting directly to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), this role will develop new product initiatives with disciplined product execution.

If you’re excited by the idea of owning the creation of something new and looking for a product leadership role with room to grow influence and impact, this role is for you.

You will help us deliver immediate value to our established platform ecosystems while defining the future direction of our new products. You’ll be especially effective, if you’re able to transition seamlessly between being deeply hands-on, an individual contributor serving as the primary Product Manager for our flagship AI and content-intelligence initiatives, and a strategic leader helping define the long term product vision for the business. You’ll be collaborating across the organization, partnering with sales, marketing, engineering, operations, our existing product management organization, and everything in between. We hope this excites you.

The ideal candidate combines deep product management expertise with strong commercial instincts and has experience taking a greenfield product to market. They’re energized by a role whose influence grows commensurate with impact.

Lastly, the right person for this role should be eager to engage in respectful argument, prepared to change their mind, and committed to a kind workplace.

Key Responsibilities:

AI & Emerging Product Discovery

• Market-Driven Discovery: Act as a critical voice of the customer, engaging in direct market validation and customer discovery to ensure AI initiatives solve real-world workflows and industry standards.
• Primary Product Owner: Act as the lead, initially, day-to-day Product Manager for the flagship AI-focused product lines, owning the roadmap, writing requirements, and defining technical specs.
• Value Mapping: Ensure all AI product investments articulate clear business outcomes, drive revenue growth, expand margins, and compound long-term enterprise value.

Cross-Functional Alignment & Go-To-Market Strategy

• Cross-Infrastructure Coordination: Collaborate with core product PMs to align on dependencies and ensure next-gen AI features integrate with and enhance legacy infrastructure products without disrupting system stability.
• C-Suite & GTM Alignment: Partner with the CEO, CTO, and Sales leader to define pricing/packaging enablement, create the AI-forward growth narrative, and support high-value enterprise sales opportunities and strategic partnerships. You will work closely with the new VP of Business Development on these initiatives.
• Pace-Setting Execution: Establish clear output-based metrics for your project, ensuring your roadmaps align with engineering’s capacity and velocity expectations.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in B2B SaaS product management, developer platforms, enterprise software, or APIs, with proven experience in a product leadership capacity.
• Greenfield Product Experience: Demonstrated track record of taking greenfield products to market, which includes identifying opportunities before there is a roadmap, validating demand with customers, and building alignment to create growth.
• AI-Native Expertise: Demonstrated track record of conceptualizing, prototyping, or deploying live, production-grade AI systems. This could be across legacy “AI” solutions, LLMs, Retrieval-Augmented Generat…