Head of Product, AI-Native Initiatives at Faros Ai

MISSION 🚀 AI is rewriting how software gets built. The tools, workflows, and team structures that defined engineering for the last two decades are being rebuilt for a world where agents handle the volume, and humans set the direction. Faros has been in the middle of this shift from day one, partnering with the largest engineering organizations on the planet as they absorb it. Our existing platform gives engineering leaders the visibility and context they need to run top-performing teams in an AI-first world. Now we are going a layer deeper. We are building a new product line that does not just measure AI engineering work, it does AI engineering work. A system where agents and humans work side by side to ship production-ready code, where humans stay meaningfully in the loop at every stage, and where outcomes are what get measured. This is the biggest bet we have placed as a company. We are looking for someone who wants to own it end-to-end. ABOUT THE ROLE We are looking for a strategic and visionary Head of Product who will be the GM for our new AI-native product line, taking it from zero to one. You will own product direction, craft the product experience, ship the roadmap, and lead the engineering team building it. This is not a coordination role. You will be in the product, in the code, in customer conversations, and in the team reviews every week. Day one, you will inherit a team of several engineers, including AI/ML engineers and platform engineers, and a set of existing software pieces that are the building blocks of this new product line (and you'll be asked to hire beyond that near term). For the next 12 to 18 months, you will personally write PRDs, prototype with modern AI tools, make architecture calls alongside your engineers, and be the person who decides what ships and when. You will set the bar for what "awesome" looks like and be accountable for it. You will work shoulder to shoulder with our new Head of Design, our Heads of Product Application and Platform, our founders, and our company leadership, all of whom have skin in this product line. Few product leader roles ask you to invent a product, lead the engineering team building it, hold equal voice in a Product-Design-Engineering triad, and stand your ground with an opinionated founder-CEO on day one. This one does. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own a new product line end-to-end. Define the vision, pick the wedge, ship the first version, and carry it to product-market fit. Success is measured in customer outcomes (revenue generated, repeat engagement, high CSAT, etc.), not features shipped. - Lead engineering directly. You are the engineering manager for this team on day one. You will partner with the tech lead for this product, set direction with your senior ICs, run the cadence, raise the bar on what we ship, and grow the team past six into whatever shape the product needs. - Prototype and ship yourself. Modern AI tools have rewritten what a single operator can do. We expect you to take full advantage. Prototype ideas in code, spin up demos, put working software in front of customers fast. If you have not touched a codebase in years, this role will feel off. - Make the hard technical tradeoffs. Agentic systems force daily decisions across quality, latency, cost, reliability, and user trust. You will own those tradeoffs and be able to explain them to your team, your customers, and our CEO. - Design for human-in-the-loop agentic systems. This product sits at the edge of what AI can do today. Every design decision has to account for where agents are strong, where they fail, what the Faros context brings to the table, and how humans stay meaningfully in the loop without becoming the bottleneck. - Partner across the PDE triad. Product, Engineering, and Design are equal peers at Faros. Your design counterpart will co-own the experience. Your tech lead will be your technical architecture collaborator. You will maintain a distinct, unapologetic product voice in every conversation. - Work directly with customer teams. The earliest version will ship alongside design partners, not be sold in. You will be in their rooms, learning what customers actually need and translating it back into the product. - Shape the commercial model. Partner with our Heads of Sales and Marketing on pricing, packaging, and go-to-market for this product line. You will carry a shared revenue target with them and influence how new commercial models take shape, while they own the final call on commercial terms. WHAT WE VALUE - Living by our values over avoiding conflict. We favor transparency and honest debate because strong decisions depend on saying the hard things out loud. - Transformational over predictable. We dedicate our efforts to work that produces monumental outcomes for our customers, even if it means trading short-term predictability for long-term impact. - Intensity over comfort. We move with urgency and focus, especially when the work is messy or unstructured. - Craftsmanship over throughput. We take pride in how things are built. Quality, coherence, and care matter. We would rather ship fewer things done right than many things done carelessly. - Ownership over process. We hand leaders problem spaces, not tasks. We trust them to drive their domain end to end, bring the right people along, and expand the team's overall capacity. REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS - Experience & DNA: 8+ years across product management and engineering combined, with meaningful time in a product leadership role. Startup experience strongly preferred. You have shipped at least one product from a blank page to real customers and real revenue, and you can tell that story in detail, including what you would do differently if you ran it back. - Technical Depth: You have been an engineer at some point in your career, or your product work has been deeply technical enough that engineers respect your architectural instincts. You can read the code, you have opinions on the system design, and you can make the tradeoffs without outsourcing them. - Player-Coach Mentality: You do not want just to direct the work; you want to be in it. You prototype. You write. You ship. And you coach others around you to be better and more productive. You use modern AI tools aggressively to multiply your own output and your team's output. - AI Fluency: Not current tool mastery, but persistence, curiosity, and vision. You experiment with AI tools in and outside of work, you do not give up when they fail, and you can articulate where this industry is heading in the next few years and how teams should operate in it. - Opinionated with an Open Mind: You hold strong product convictions and will push back on a CEO, a customer, or a head of engineering when you think they are wrong. You also take "you are wrong" with curiosity, not defensiveness or submission. - Outcome-Driven Mindset: You understand that great products drive business. You will be measured not just on shipping, but on customer satisfaction (CSAT) and our ability to convert Proof of Concepts (POCs) into successful, closed deals. - Hacker Spirit: You love solving puzzles. You are happier with a hard, ambiguous problem than a clean, well-scoped one. You poke at edges, ask uncomfortable questions, and would rather find problems yourself than have them find you. You get restless when the work gets too comfortable. - Location: Based in or willing to relocate to the San Mateo area. We may consider other West Coast locations in exceptional cases. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS - You have founded a company at some point, even if briefly, even if it did not work out. - Domain experience in developer tools, engineering productivity, dev infrastructure, coding assistants, or agent platforms. - You have led a product at a Series A or Series B startup, not just in a large company. - You have worked on products where humans and AI agents collaborate on the same work, and you have a point of view on what that should feel like. - You have seriously experimented with modern AI-native tools (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Devin, v0, Replit Agent, or equivalents) and have opinions on where each of them wins and loses. - CS degree or equivalent engineering background.