[Hiring] Product Operations Director @Applied Systems, Inc.

Role Description

Product leaders at Applied turn customer signals, market context, and technical possibility into clear decisions. In this role you will lead how our product organization applies AI to its own work, own the tooling and infrastructure it runs on, and own the operating system that connects them: the mechanisms, standards, and measurement that turn customer insight into delivered outcomes. You make them repeatable, measurable, and adopted.

What you’ll own

• Lead AI enablement for product teams.
• Set the strategy, standards, and governance for how Product and Engineering apply AI to product operations work.
• Own the skill registry, connectors, and shared automations.
• Evaluate and select AI tools, define access and data guardrails, and measure adoption and impact.
• Build and run training that equips product teams to use AI tools and workflows effectively.
• Own the product operations infrastructure.
• Be accountable for the connected stack that product teams run on.
• Set architecture, ownership, documentation, and reliability standards for this stack.
• Own the product tooling portfolio.
• Be accountable for strategy, adoption, ROI, and outcomes for product analytics and user behavior.
• Decide where to build, buy, consolidate, or retire tools.
• Govern tenant-level configuration and access.
• Be accountable for subscription architecture, instrumentation and tagging standards, privacy and unmasking governance.
• Manage vendors and contracts.
• Negotiate renewals, expansions, and new-tool evaluations with Procurement.
• Steward our operating system and run its mechanisms.
• Maintain and version the operating system with Product and Engineering leadership.
• Standardize how work moves through the lifecycle.
• Own the min-spec templates, launch-readiness scorecards, and telemetry and instrumentation standards.
• Build the measurement layer.
• Build the data and dashboard infrastructure that delivers the metrics defined with the Portfolio Strategy Director.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of professional experience, with 10+ in product operations, product management, program management, and/or project management.
• Enabled teams with AI tools and workflows, governed their use, and can show measurable impact on efficiency or quality.
• Owned tools end to end: strategy, implementation, adoption, ROI, vendor negotiation, and contracts.
• Designed and run integrated tooling infrastructure, including data flows, dashboards, and system integrations.
• Built operating models and repeatable processes where none existed, and led the change management to get them adopted.
• Lead through influence without positional authority, credible with engineers, product leaders, and the C-suite.
• Communicate in writing and data, and scrappy enough to pull your own data when the perfect report doesn't exist.
• Facilitate high-stakes cross-functional discussions and drive them to a decision.
• Genuine curiosity about insurance technology.

Requirements

• Stand up AI enablement for product teams.
• Launch the skill registry and connector standards, define governance for access and data, and set adoption and impact measures.
• Set the tooling and infrastructure roadmap.
• Define the multi-subscription Pendo architecture and 2027 budget, map integrations across the product stack, and set the vendor strategy.
• Take the operating system from draft to v1.
• Run the working groups, publish the min-spec and launch-readiness templates, and support the first teams to adopt it in Q1 2027.
• Build the cross-functional feedback mechanism.
• Turn the XFN customer feedback process into a standing mechanism that feeds annual allocation and planning, with clear drivers, inputs, and outcomes.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Holiday and vacation time.
• Health and wellness days.
• A day off for your birthday.

Company Description

Applied is the connective intelligence transforming how insurance works. We build the platforms, data, and intelligent systems that connect agencies and carriers across the insurance lifecycle.

Here, careers move with the work. You can own meaningful decisions, build what reaches the market, expand your scope as the business evolves, and work alongside people who bring expertise, curiosity, and care to what they create.