Principal Product Manager

ABOUT LIGHTWORKS

Lightworks is a global AI engineering firm that integrates consequential technologies and bolsters mission-critical programs. Launched in the AI era, Lightworks is powered by people who have spent decades implementing net-new and highly iterative technologies at scale across banking, insurance, telecommunications, and public infrastructure.

Our team brings deep engineering expertise and first-hand knowledge of how organizations operate, distribute change at scale, and manage risk. We specialize in control plane engineering, bolstering mission-critical programs, modernization, and scaling emergent technologies.

ABOUT THE AI CONSORTIUM

The AI Consortium (AIC) brings together some of the world's largest and most regulated organizations, including founding members Lightworks, Scotiabank, Sun Life and TELUS. Its mission is to jointly build and govern the critical infrastructure needed to adopt AI safely, responsibly and at enterprise scale. Rather than solving the same challenges in isolation, members pool engineering, research and investment to develop shared, member-owned AI control systems and intellectual property, which each member deploys independently with perpetual-use and ownership rights. Its flagship program, the Agentic Control Plane, is already running in production in regulated environments at over 2T tokens/month.

THE ROLE

Lightworks is hiring a Principal Product Manager to work within the AI Consortium (AIC) for our Head of Engineering, alongside AI Consortium members. The AIC is developing several projects, including the flagship, the Agentic Control Plane (ACP), and others such as the AI Operations Centre (AI-OC) and the AI Token Exchange (AI-TX).

You will own the product roadmap for the AI Consortium, working for the Head of Engineering to deliver on the product vision they set, liaising directly with the Lightworks governance and technical leadership teams, and Member engineering leads to ensure the AIC continues to deliver efficiently and successfully. You will hold the single holistic view of progress, risk and resourcing, and you will anticipate delivery issues before they impact the program.

You will work closely with engineering leadership, own the delivery cadence that keeps multiple teams co-ordinated, and give the Lightworks CEO, Directors, VPs and CIO-level stakeholders a clear and accurate view of where things stand.

You must be highly proficient in AI tooling and harnesses, with a demonstrated background in using AI in planning and documentation, reporting, and spec generation. The AIC is leading and redefining the AI-SDLC in multiple large organizations, and we are constantly updating and iterating as it scales. You must be comfortable with and be able to improve upon the software specification and roadmap process, while maintaining exceptional governance of a product line releasing over 400 changes a month. You must demonstrate deep domain proficiency to be considered for this role.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

Product Ownership

• Own the multi-year product roadmap for the AIC portfolio, including the ACP, AI-OC and AI-TX, translating the product vision set by the Head of Engineering into a roadmap that reflects Member priorities and is endorsed by the governance board
• Work closely with Member engineering leads on how each product is built, and translate the needs of Member institutions, their regulators and end users into clear product outcomes, prioritizing the backlog against business value, risk and regulatory obligations
• Partner with the Head of Engineering and delivery leads to define and continuously improve the AI-native specification process, covering how specs, acceptance criteria and release scope are generated, reviewed and governed across a product line shipping 400+ changes per month
• Define and own product success measures, including adoption, reliability, cost and value realized per Member, and use them to inform the Head of Engineering's investment and trade-off decisions
• Sequence the roadmap, and prepare artifacts and materials to allow the Head of Engineering to set scope and release readiness, balancing speed with the control, compliance and resilience expectations of regulated institutions
• Be comfortable in terminal environments, pipelines, and AI harnesses. Demonstrate deep domain expertise in Claude Code and/or other AI-native interfaces

Delivery

• Own the delivery cadence: work with the Head of Engineering and governance board to set priorities, report on status and progress, and align across the consortium members and teams
• Work with stakeholders and the engineering teams to manage the product backlog and roadmap
• Maintain situational awareness of team progress, blockers and velocity
• Identify, track and mitigate risks to development quality and velocity

Stakeholder & Relationship Leadership

• Build and maintain trusted relationships with board members, delivery leads and engineering leads
• Bring decisions to the Head of Engineering and governance board with clear options, and track and report on implementation

Practice Leadership

• Build, document and maintain best practices for agentic product delivery and champion these within Lightworks
• Identify opportunities to uplift delivery methodology within other Lightworks engagements

Tooling & Process

• Use AI and agentic tools to understand status, identify blockers and build and execute automated processes
• Identify, build, rebuild and retire processes as we scale and evolve our delivery team and practices
• Engage with modern SDLC tooling including GitHub and Jira
• Git skills mandatory
• Claude Code & terminal environments mandatory

WHAT WE LOOK FOR

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Business Administration, Management, Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering or related fields
  PMP, CSM, AgilePM or related certifications
• Anthropic, OpenAI or related certifications would be highly regarded, or a commitment to achieve same in the first month of employment

Experience

• 10+ years in software delivery, with several years leading delivery or program management at a portfolio or multi-team scale
• A track record of shipping complex software predictably across multiple concurrent teams
• Demonstrated experience in managing artifacts, materials, and presentations to the CEO and CIO tier

Domain Expertise

• Comfortable using AI and agentic tooling to build reports, automate processes and derive insights
• Fluency in modern software delivery practices
• Strong understanding of process engineering, especially as it applies to high-velocity product development
• Strong command of delivery metrics and the ability to turn them into a clear narrative for executives
• A bias for surfacing risk and scope creep early, and the credibility to hold teams and stakeholders to their commitments

Communication & Culture Fit

• Excellent written and verbal communication, especially in a distributed, async-first environment across multiple time zones
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and standing up structure where little exists
• The drive and determination to be part of the transformation of software development and delivery
• Willingness to take direction from the Head of Engineering, challenge constructively, and fully commit once a decision is made

Mandatory (one of the following)

• Financial services or other regulated industry experience
• Demonstrated product background within an S&P 500 high-technology company that services regulated verticals
• Owned a product line in a globally recognized high-technology product company (e.g., Shopify, Atlassian)

WHAT WE OFFER

• Competitive base compensation with performance bonus, aligned with industry standards
• Full benefits package and stock option plan participation
• Unlimited certification and training budgets
• Attendance at leading global conferences
• World-class Apple equipment and unrestricted AI platform usage
• Open choice & accountability to choose products & services to support your role
• Direct access to the ACP platform and consortium - a first-of-its-kind program at the frontier of regulated AI
• Direct access and accountability to the CEO and Head of Engineering

HOW TO APPLY

Explore this role and apply directly at light.works/careers