Expert IT Product Owner

AI Use Case Lead

Location: Oakland, CA - Hybrid

Duration: 5 Months

Work Mode: Hybrid (at least 1 day per week onsite)

Responsibilities:

• Lead the intake, evaluation, and prioritization of AI use cases for Substation Operations.
• Partner with Operations, Asset Management, Engineering, IT, and field teams to understand business problems and translate them into AI solution requirements.
• Define clear use case scope, business value, success criteria, expected outcomes, and adoption requirements.
• Work with IT, data engineers, solution architects, and AI/ML teams to define data sources, data pipelines, model requirements, and integration needs.
• Support data validation across systems such as APM, SAP, TOA, DTA, PI, Company, work management tools, schedules, Snowflake, and reporting platforms.
• Partner with data stewards and SMEs to confirm source-of-truth logic, asset hierarchy, equipment identifiers, alarm definitions, inspection data, maintenance data, and operational rules.
• Help define AI model inputs, outputs, business rules, user experience, and decision-making workflows.
• Coordinate pilots, proof of concepts, testing, user feedback, and production rollout planning.
• Ensure AI outputs are explainable, actionable, and aligned with how Operations actually works.
• Partner with cybersecurity, data governance, and IT architecture teams to ensure solutions meet enterprise standards.
• Track benefits, risks, issues, dependencies, and adoption metrics for AI initiatives.
• Prepare leadership updates, business cases, roadmap materials, and funding justifications.
• Work with vendors and internal teams to evaluate AI capabilities and ensure vendor solutions align with business needs.
• Support change management, training, and communications so users understand and trust AI-enabled tools.

Requirements:

• Strong understanding of operations, asset management, maintenance, inspections, work management, or utility field processes.
• Experience working with IT, data, analytics, or digital transformation teams.
• Ability to translate business problems into technical requirements without losing the operational intent.
• Strong requirements gathering, process mapping, stakeholder engagement, and prioritization skills.
• Experience with enterprise systems such as SAP, APM, Snowflake, Power BI, PI, or similar platforms.
• Understanding of data quality, source-of-truth concepts, data lineage, and business data validation.
• Familiarity with AI, machine learning, predictive analytics, chatbots, automation, or advanced analytics use cases.
• Ability to lead pilots and proof of concepts from idea through implementation.
• Strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to manage competing priorities and keep teams aligned around business value.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience in electric utility, substation operations, transmission and distribution, asset management, or field operations.
• Experience supporting AI use cases related to asset health, alarms, inspections, maintenance optimization, work planning, or operational risk.
• Knowledge of Snowflake, Foundry, Cortex AI, Power BI, SAP, Bentley APM, PI historian, or similar platforms.
• Experience working with vendors on technology pilots or enterprise software implementations.
• Experience preparing executive presentations, funding requests, roadmaps, and implementation plans.