Forward Deployed AI Product Manager

Talkdesk is a customer experience automation company building AI-first solutions for customer interactions. The Forward Deployed AI Product Manager connects clients with engineering teams by discovering operational workflows, translating them into AI-powered product requirements, owning deployments, validating solutions, and influencing the product roadmap.

Responsibilities:

• Serve as the primary Product point of contact for a portfolio of retail, e-commerce, and hospitality clients, owning relationships across contact center operations, guest experience, digital commerce, IT, and store operations stakeholders, often working alongside C-suite sponsors
• Lead structured discovery engagements—interviews, order journey mapping, queue observation, side-by-sides with agents, and document analysis—to surface automation opportunities and unmet guest, shopper, or operational needs
• Connect client operational pain points to Talkdesk AI platform capabilities—while respecting brand voice, consumer privacy, and PCI constraints
• Review pre-sales Statements of Work drafted by the Solution Architect to confirm scope, feasibility, and design alignment before signature
• Translate real-world workflows—WISMO (Where Is My Order?), returns, exchanges, loyalty/rewards inquiries, reservation bookings, cancellations, check-in flows, and VIP guest routing—into structured product and configuration requirements with FDEs, Applied ML, and Solution Engineers
• Own the quality and completeness of Autopilot design and specification documents for engineering handoffs, including required brand disclosures, payment verification steps, TCPA consent capture, and agent escalation criteria
• Define business KPIs with clients (time-to-value, containment/call deflection, self-service completion rate, first-contact resolution, CSAT/NPS, average handle time, order modification cycle time, cost per contact)
• Enforce scope discipline during UAT—route out-of-scope requests to the Sales/Account team to follow formal change order processes
• Own deployments end-to-end (from pilot kickoff through go-live): manage timelines, stakeholder communication, change management, and the iteration cycle to production-ready deployments
• Generate test criteria from build artifacts and conduct manual validation (e.g., live call testing, messaging flow validation, authentication paths) before approving client UAT
• Partner with client legal, privacy, and security teams to clear control requirements (PCI DSS, TCPA, GDPR/CCPA) gating go-live
• Drive client UAT to completion efficiently, including on-site travel for strategic accounts to accelerate testing and fine-tuning
• Monitor deployed Autopilots post-launch using observability tooling, evaluating performance and resolving field issues
• Ensure clients and Customer Experience Managers (CXMs) can successfully measure business success metrics before handing off ongoing account management
• Document ROI proof points and case-for-scale narratives at go-live to empower CXMs to drive expansion and renewal
• Surface reusable patterns and high-priority gaps from retail/hospitality field deployments to the core product roadmap, partnering with engineering and product leadership
• Contribute to internal knowledge bases, playbooks, and templates that systematize the FDPM practice as Talkdesk scales

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in retail, e-commerce, or hospitality, with hands-on exposure to customer-facing or back-office operations in one or more domains: Retail & E-Commerce Servicing (orders, returns, exchanges, promotions, loyalty), Hospitality Operations (reservations, guest relations, front desk, concierge), or Restaurant Operations (ordering, delivery support, table management)
• Demonstrated experience in a client-facing delivery role—implementation, technical project management, solution consulting, or customer success—where you owned outcomes, not just activities
• Ability to quickly understand and map complex guest and shopper journeys, then distill them into structured requirements and prioritized problem statements
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to present to VP/C-suite stakeholders and translate between store/guest operations and technical teams
• Working familiarity with TCPA outbound contact rules, PCI DSS payment handling, consumer data privacy regulations (CCPA, GDPR), and brand compliance guidelines
• Comfortable operating in whitespace; you default to action and bring structure to uncertainty
• Experience with agentic workflows and a strong curiosity about AI and automation; eager to develop deep product fluency in conversational AI for guest and retail experiences
• Experience at a retail, e-commerce, OMS, POS, PMS, or loyalty technology vendor in a Project Manager, Implementation Consultant, Technical Services, or similar role
• Prior experience in a startup or high-growth technology company in a PM, solutions engineering, or FDE-adjacent capacity
• Familiarity with CCaaS, IVR, or conversational AI, with prior exposure to platforms such as Talkdesk, Genesys, Five9, or similar
• Understanding of APIs and integrations with retail/hospitality platforms—Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Magento, SAP, Oracle Commerce, Workday, Opera PMS, Sabre, Amadeus, or major loyalty and POS systems
• Experience building or contributing to product roadmaps, writing PRDs, or working in Agile/scrum delivery processes