AI Product & Technology Lead

Our client is a Boston growth equity firm with $1.7 billion in assets under management, backing founder‑owned software, internet, and tech‑enabled businesses across the US and Canada. Founded in 2010, the firm has built a portfolio of more than 40 high‑growth companies and partners with founders for five to ten years, not five to ten quarters. It is a 58‑person team where partners, operators, and finance sit close together, and it has already gone all in on AI: weekly AI labs, sandbox environments, and enterprise AI tooling in daily use across the firm.

This is the firm’s first dedicated AI hire: a greenfield, high‑visibility seat reporting to the COO with a dotted line to a co‑founder, owning how AI gets built and used across the entire firm. There is no inherited playbook. You write the strategy and you ship it.

• Own the firm’s internal AI strategy end to end, from spotting automation opportunities to building and deploying the tools themselves
• Take ownership of existing proprietary internal tools and reimagine them inside a firm‑wide AI strategy
• Work directly with partners, analysts, and operations teams to turn business needs into working AI‑powered products, not prototypes
• Lead and manage a third‑party engineering team, setting direction and holding the bar for AI‑native development standards
• Make build‑vs‑buy calls on AI tools and platforms, weighing cost, opportunity, and compliance implications
• Manage integrations across CRM and deal flow tools, data pipelines, and workflow systems
• Partner with compliance to establish data classification, access controls, and AI risk frameworks
• Serve as the internal AI subject matter expert, enabling the broader team to actually use what you build

• 3 to 15 years building AI‑powered products or tools that run in production and that real users depend on
• Genuinely AI‑native: you have personally built AI products, tools, or agents, not just directed the people who did
• You have owned a product end to end, internal or external, and can point to a measurable outcome: revenue, adoption, productivity, or retention
• Comfortable at the intersection of technology and business strategy, able to translate complex technical concepts for senior, non‑technical leadership
• Experience building internal tools for internal stakeholders
• Hands‑on CRM experience, either administering platforms or building integrations and automations on top of them
• Financial services, PE, or VC context, or another regulated environment where compliance and data governance are critical
• Experience working directly with compliance, legal, or risk teams on technology or data governance matters
• A startup or founder background, and a strong academic record
• Comfort with Python, LLM APIs, and modern AI frameworks (useful, but being AI‑native matters more than any one language)

• Base salary: $250,000 to $350,000
• Potential participation in carried interest (phantom carry) once the role becomes portfolio‑facing, with specifics discussed at the offer stage

• Boston, MA, on‑site 4 days per week (a 3 day minimum may be considered for the right person)
• This is a firm that genuinely values in‑person collaboration
• Visa sponsorship is not preferred, but may be considered for an exceptional candidate