Lead Product Manager - AI Gateway; P4552

Overview

Cincinnati, OH;
Chicago, IL. 84.51° is a retail data science, insights and media company. We help The Kroger Co., consumer packaged goods companies, agencies, publishers and affiliates create more personalized and valuable experiences for shoppers across the path to purchase.

Powered by cutting‑edge science, we utilize first‑party retail data from more than 62 million U.S. households sourced through the Kroger Plus loyalty card program to fuel a more customer‑centric journey using 84.51° Insights, 84.51° Loyalty Marketing and our retail media advertising solution, Kroger Precision Marketing.

84.51° follows a 5‑day in‑office work schedule to support collaboration, alignment, and team connection.

The AI Enablement team builds foundational AI capabilities that transform Kroger and 84.51°—including better solutions and outcomes for our shoppers and associates. The AIGateway is a cross‑functional team within AI Enablement responsible for the primary AI infrastructure that powers these solutions and democratizes access to AI models. As Product Owner for this team, you will work closely with the AIGateway Product Director, tech leads for each product, and cross‑functional design and development teams.

The LEAD PRODUCT MANAGER is the chief navigator, business champion, and team linguist that is accountable for setting team priorities and maximizing the value of the product results from the work of the development team. You own the details of the business and technical value delivered at the team level. You translate business requirements into product requirements to ensure that the product delivers on user needs.

You own the measurement of the value delivered and other metrics for your product. This role requires excellent organizational and communication skills, technical acumen, and artificial intelligence domain knowledge.

• Drive business value for the team by prioritizing and ordering product backlog items based on the product roadmap, inclusive of product, engineering, UX and data science roadmaps.
• Experienced in managing multiple teams’ product backlogs in parallel and ensuring they’re transparent, visible and clearly communicated.
• Partner with cross‑functional engineering, UX and data science peers to translate business desires/requirements into effective features and stories that are ready for development.
• Outline clear acceptance criteria to clearly communicate the definition of "done".
• Partner with external contractors or technical support to ensure the delivery of the scope of work, within the agreed timeline and in accordance to the stated acceptance criteria.
• Deep understanding of the business domain, stakeholders, business processes and constraints in which your product(s) play.
• Deep understanding of customers/users’ problems, how they think and operate and the platforms/technology they use. Ability to become familiar with new technology, business domains, and/or analytical practices that impact your product(s).
• Understand and communicate organization objectives, strategies and solution needs to the team to facilitate results.
• Manage and communicate dependencies and risks.
• Stakeholder management – experienced in building and managing internal and external stakeholder relationships to influence and drive change.
• Experienced level knowledge in the development and use of product data to influence product decisions/roadmap—both quantitative and qualitative.
• Clearly communicate the value of the work being delivered.

• Professional work experience in artificial intelligence/Generative AI applications.
• Skilled in managing cross‑functional software development teams in an agile environment.
• Skilled in managing business priorities against design/user needs while delivering against product roadmaps.
• Skilled in managing end‑to‑end software product development.
• Stakeholder management skills – experienced in building and managing stakeholder relationships to influence and drive change.
• Problem solving, critical thinking and analytical skills.
• Planning, organizational and time management skills.
• Comfort with ambiguity – remains confident,…