AI Product Lead

Role Description

Granicus serves more than 7,000 public-sector agencies and powers approximately 30 billion digital interactions annually. Within the Office of the CTO, we operate an AI-native software development lifecycle: a production engineering model in which autonomous agents perform high-confidence implementation work and senior engineers orchestrate, review, and own the outcome. The model is established and operating; we are scaling it across additional delivery teams.

This role joins one of those teams. Our engineering standards are calibrated to the practices used by leading software and AI organizations:

• generator-verifier architecture
• eval-driven development
• staged deployment
• high-volume autonomous pull-request pipelines

Operating constraints (non-negotiable):

• agents execute only within branches;
• all agent-generated code passes senior human review before merging to production;
• autonomous execution is a force multiplier and does not transfer accountability away from the responsible engineer.

Compliance obligations — NIST 800-53 Rev 5, WCAG, SOC 2, and applicable FedRAMP authorizations — are treated as engineering requirements and a source of competitive advantage.

Conventional delivery distributes product management, design, and engineering leadership across separate individuals, introducing coordination overhead at each handoff. In an AI-native lifecycle, where implementation throughput is high, those handoffs become the primary constraint. This role consolidates the product, design, and delivery-leadership disciplines into a single accountable owner who synthesizes them rather than displacing the specialists who practice them. The role translates product intent into shipped, compliant software by directing the agent array and implementing front-end experiences directly. It combines the responsibilities of a staff product engineer, a design engineer, and an engineering manager, and requires demonstrated capability across all three.

What Your Impact Will Look Like

• Own the product outcome of the team end to end — from problem definition through accepted, in-production software. You hold the roadmap commitment and the quality bar.
• Direct the agent array across three execution modes:
  • Interactive (real-time pairing with an agent)
  • Supervised (agents propose changes; you review and gate each pull request)
  • Fully Autonomous (agents execute a scoped workstream end to end; you review the output)
• Implement production front-end code from the same repository as the engineering team, under engineering review.
• Apply product and design rigor at every stage — discovery, user research, information architecture, interaction design, and prioritization — and ensure that increased build velocity does not compromise upstream rigor.
• Author the prompts, evaluation criteria, and acceptance criteria that convert product intent into work an agent can execute and a verifier can validate.
• Enforce the human review gate and accessibility standards in partnership with the lead engineer.
• Set and maintain the team’s delivery cadence and contribute improvements to the shared operating model that other delivery teams adopt.

Ownership From Day One

• Product outcome and roadmap commitment for one delivery team
• Deliberate use of the three execution modes per workstream
• Direct authorship of the team’s production front-end code
• Acceptance criteria and evaluation suites for all team deliverables

Scope You Will Grow Into

• Refinement of the cross-team product-and-design operating model
• Higher autonomy ratios supported by measured agent reliability
• A design system and component library that agents build against by default
• Mentorship of additional product-and-design engineering leads as the model scales

Qualifications

• End-to-end product delivery as a builder.
• Production front-end engineering.
• Design discipline.
• Direction of AI coding agents.
• A track record of defining how teams work.
• High autonomy under ambiguity.

Preferred

• High-assurance or regulated delivery experience.
• Public-sector or govtech product experience.
• Design-systems ownership.
• Experience operating within an eval-driven or test-first engineering culture.

Indicators of a Strong Fit

• You are effective owning quality for software an agent implemented.
• You can both define the product and implement its interface.
• You hold product positions firmly and revise them quickly in response to evidence.
• You regard regulatory constraints as design parameters to engineer within.
• You want to shape the operating model rather than inherit a fixed process.

Indicators This Role Is Not a Fit

• You require a single, well-bounded discipline — product, or design, or engineering exclusively.
• You consider code review outside your responsibility.
• You are uncomfortable being accountable for output you did not personally author.
• You require fully specified requirements before beginning work.
• You view compliance as overhead to minimize rather than rigor to engineer.

Pay Range

USD $144,000.00 - USD $184,000.00 /Yr.

Benefits

• Flexible Time Off – Take the time you need to rest, recharge, and live your life.
• Company-Wide Wellbeing Days – Paid days off to unplug and focus on your mental health.
• Work From Home Reimbursement – Support a productive home office environment.
• Multiple Health Plan Options – Including a 100% employer-paid plan.
• Employer HSA Contributions – When enrolled in a High-Deductible Health Plan.
• Fitness Reimbursement Program – Stay active, your way.
• On-Demand Mental Health Support – Access to Headspace and other wellness tools.
• Paid Parental Leave – For both birthing and non-birthing parents.
• Traditional & Roth 401(k) – With a generous company match.
• Life & AD&D Insurance – 100% employer-paid coverage for peace of mind.
• Online Learning Platforms – Fuel your professional development.
• Competitive Salary & Bonuses – Your contributions are valued and rewarded.