Lead Product Owner

The Lead Product Owner, AI Platform is responsible for defining and delivering the vision, strategy, and roadmap for Citizens’ enterprise AI Platform. This leader will manage a team of three direct reports and work across Business, Technology, Cybersecurity, Risk, Legal, Compliance, Data, and Analytics to continuously build and enhance secure, scalable, and reusable AI capabilities.

The Lead Product Owner will translate enterprise AI strategy into actionable priorities, guide platform delivery, and ensure capabilities meet business, user, technical, and risk requirements. This role will also drive platform adoption, monitor emerging AI technologies and industry trends, and use product performance data and stakeholder feedback to continuously improve the platform.

Using agile product management practices and a collaborative, digital-first mindset, this leader will help accelerate Citizens’ transition from project-based delivery to a product-based operating model focused on measurable outcomes, responsible AI, and long-term platform value.

Responsibilities

Product Vision and Strategy

• Own and communicate the vision, strategy, and multiyear roadmap for the enterprise AI Platform.

• Translate Citizens’ AI strategy and business priorities into platform capabilities, product outcomes, objectives, and key results.

• Define the platform experience for developers, data scientists, product teams, business users, and other internal stakeholders.

• Balance near-term business needs with long-term scalability, security, resiliency, governance, and technical sustainability.

• Identify opportunities to expand the platform through reusable AI services, tools, integrations, and operating-model enhancements.

• Monitor developments in generative AI, machine learning, large language models, agentic AI, model operations, and responsible AI to inform platform priorities.

Platform Delivery and Lifecycle Management

• Translate the product vision into clearly defined capabilities, features, requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria.

• Own, prioritize, and continuously refine the product backlog to ensure the highest-value work is delivered first.

• Partner with Technology, engineering, architecture, and delivery leaders to guide platform design, development, integration, testing, implementation, and support.

• Ensure delivery teams meet agreed-upon standards for quality, security, reliability, usability, scope, and operational readiness.

• Establish processes for gathering, evaluating, and prioritizing platform enhancement requests.

• Lead roadmap reviews, product demonstrations, release planning, and stakeholder updates.

• Use platform analytics, adoption measures, operational data, user feedback, agile metrics, and objectives and key results to evaluate performance and identify improvement opportunities.

• Manage the platform across its full lifecycle, from initial delivery through adoption, optimization, maturity, and continuous enhancement.

Enterprise Stakeholder, Risk, and Responsible AI Leadership

• Serve as the primary product leader and advocate for the AI Platform across Citizens.

• Partner with Business, Technology, Cybersecurity, Risk, Model Risk Management, Legal, Compliance, Privacy, Data Governance, and Analytics to align platform priorities, requirements, and delivery.

• Facilitate decisions across stakeholders with differing business, technical, and risk considerations.

• Embed security, privacy, governance, access management, monitoring, auditability, and human oversight requirements into the platform roadmap and backlog.

• Ensure the platform supports the responsible, secure, transparent, and compliant development and use of AI.

• Identify and communicate key risks, dependencies, vulnerabilities, tradeoffs, and mitigation plans.

• Help establish repeatable processes that enable AI use cases to progress efficiently from experimentation through approval, production, and ongoing monitoring.

• Develop clear business cases and executive-level communications to secure alignment, investment, and organizational support.

• Translate common business and product needs into reusable enterprise platform capabilities.

• Drive platform adoption through onboarding, training, documentation, communications, and user feedback.

• Communicate progress against the roadmap, objectives, adoption goals, risks, and dependencies to key stakeholders.

• Maintain awareness of evolving AI regulations, industry standards, and internal policies to inform platform priorities.

People and Team Leadership

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of three direct reports.

• Establish clear responsibilities, performance expectations, development goals, and ways of working.

• Delegate product ownership responsibilities while maintaining alignment across the overall platform vision and roadmap.

• Create an inclusive, collaborative, and high-performing team environment focused on accountability, innovation, and measurable outcomes.

• Develop team capabilities in product management, AI, stakeholder management, execution, and leadership.

• Coordinate work across product owners, engineers, architects, data scientists, delivery leaders, and control partners.

• Promote agile product management practices and continuous improvement across the broader AI Platform team.

Qualifications

• 7 or more years of experience in product management, product development, platform management, digital strategy, technology, data, analytics, or a related discipline.

• Experience owning a product or platform vision, strategy, roadmap, backlog, and delivery lifecycle.

• Experience leading and developing employees, including direct people-management responsibility.

• Demonstrated ability to lead complex, enterprise-scale initiatives involving Business, Technology, Cybersecurity, Risk, Legal, Compliance, Data, and other control functions.

• Knowledge of AI and machine learning concepts, including generative AI, large language models, model development, deployment, monitoring, and responsible AI.

• Understanding of the capabilities required to support secure, scalable, and governed enterprise AI solutions.

• Experience translating strategic objectives and technical concepts into clear product capabilities, requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria.

• Demonstrated success establishing measurable objectives and key results and using data to evaluate product performance.

• Strong understanding of agile product delivery approaches, including backlog management, iterative development, Kanban, Scrum, and continuous improvement.

• Ability to balance business value, user experience, risk, technical integrity, and long-term platform needs.

• Strong executive communication, facilitation, presentation, negotiation, and storytelling skills.

• Ability to influence decisions and drive alignment across teams without relying solely on formal authority.

• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in a complex, highly regulated environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building or managing an enterprise AI, machine learning, data science, cloud, developer, or technology platform.

• Experience within financial services or another highly regulated industry.

• Familiarity with AI governance, model risk management, cybersecurity, privacy, data governance, and regulatory requirements.

• Experience enabling AI solutions from experimentation and prototyping through production deployment and ongoing monitoring.

• Familiarity with cloud platforms, machine learning operations, large language model operations, application programming interfaces, identity and access management, observability, and platform integration.

• Experience developing platform adoption, onboarding, training, and change-management strategies.

• Bachelor’s degree in business, technology, engineering, computer science, data science, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Required Competencies

• Focus on the Customer

• Unlock Potential

• Drive Outcomes

• Strategic Thinking

• Product Leadership

• People Leadership

• Innovation

• Technical Excellence

• Risk Management and Responsible AI

• Agile Methodologies

• Requirements Analysis

• Collaboration and Influence

• Executive Communication and Storytelling

Hours & Work Schedule

• Hours per Week: 40
• Work Schedule: Monday - Friday
• Hybrid: 4 days per week on site, 1 day remote.

Pay Transparency

The salary range for this position is $142,000 - $185,000 per year, plus an opportunity to earn an annual discretionary bonus. Actual pay is based on various factors including but not limited to the budget, work location, and relevant skills and experience.

We offer competitive pay, comprehensive medical, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, maternity/paternity leave, flexible work arrangements, education reimbursement, wellness programs and more. Note, Citizens’ paid time off policy exceeds the mandatory, paid sick or paid time-away policy of every local and state jurisdiction in the United States. For an overview of our benefits, visit https://jobs.citizensbank.com/benefits.

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