Principal Product Owner

Requisition ID # 174067

Job Category: Information Technology

Job Level: Manager/Principal

Business Unit: Technology & Security

Work Type: Hybrid

Job Location: Oakland

Department Overview

AI & Cloud Engineering team designs, builds, and operates the foundational platforms that power AI, automation, and cloud-native workloads. We partner closely with partner teams, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and the business to ensure solutions are production‑ready, cost/benefit‑aware, and resilient.

Position Summary

The Automation/AI Automation Technical Product Owner is responsible for defining, prioritizing, and delivering enterprise automation capabilities that improve operational efficiency, reduce manual work, accelerate business processes, and enable new AI-powered ways of working. This role sits at the intersection of business process optimization, automation engineering, AI, enterprise architecture, and product management. The TPO will identify high-value automation opportunities, translate business needs into technical products and capabilities, and lead cross-functional teams from ideation through production deployment and continuous improvement. The role will establish automation as an enterprise product capability—leveraging workflow automation, APIs, RPA, integration platforms, generative AI, AI agents, orchestration, and intelligent decisioning where appropriate.

This position is hybrid, working from your remote office and your assigned work location based on business needs or company requirements. The assigned work location will be within the PG&E Service Territory and will be agreed upon by the successful candidate and hiring leader.

PG&E is providing the full salary/pay range for this position. The actual amount paid to an individual will be based on multiple factors, including, but not limited to, internal equity, specific skills, education, licenses or certifications, experience, market value, and geographic location. The range to reasonably expect will be around the minimum and the midpoint. The final decision will be made on a case-by-case basis related to the factors above. This job is also eligible to participate in PG&E’s discretionary incentive compensation programs.

Bay Area Min: $151,000

Bay Area Mid: $204,000

Bay Area Max: $257,000

Job Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Roadmap

• Define the enterprise automation and AI automation product vision, strategy, and roadmap
• Develop a portfolio of automation products and reusable enterprise capabilities.
• Establish product success metrics, including productivity, cycle-time reduction, cost avoidance, quality, adoption, and customer experience
• Identify and prioritize automation opportunities based on business value, risk, complexity, and feasibility.

• Build and maintain the automation product backlog and prioritize features and use cases.

AI & Intelligent Automation

• Identify opportunities where AI, generative AI, and AI agents can augment or replace traditional automation.
• Evaluate when to use deterministic workflow automation, RPA, APIs, AI-assisted workflows, or autonomous AI agents.
• Define requirements for AI-enabled workflows, including human-in-the-loop controls, guardrails, evaluation, observability, and escalation.
• Partner with AI platform teams to leverage enterprise LLMs, AI gateways, agent platforms, vector databases, and other AI capabilities.
• Establish reusable patterns for safe and scalable AI automation.

Technical Product Ownership

• Translate business problems into clear technical requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, and product capabilities.
• Work closely with architects, engineers, cybersecurity, data teams, and platform teams to define solution designs.
• Ensure automation products integrate effectively with enterprise systems, APIs, data platforms, SaaS applications, and legacy systems.
• Participate in architecture and technology decisions and ensure solutions align with enterprise standards.
• Drive technical debt reduction, platform scalability, reliability, security, and maintainability.

Automation Delivery

• Lead cross-functional teams through discovery, prototyping, MVP development, production deployment, and continuous improvement.
• Establish repeatable automation development and deployment patterns.
• Promote API-first, event-driven, cloud-native, Infrastructure-as-Code, and DevSecOps practices where appropriate.
• Ensure automation is observable, supportable, auditable, and resilient.
• Establish appropriate monitoring, logging, alerting, and operational support models.

Governance, Risk & Responsible AI

• Partner with cybersecurity, privacy, legal, risk, and architecture teams to establish automation and AI automation governance.
• Ensure appropriate identity, access control, data protection, auditability, and segregation of duties.
• Define risk controls for AI agents, including permissions, tool access, human approval, transaction limits, and failure handling.
• Establish standards for AI evaluation, hallucination management, prompt security, and model/application monitoring.

Business Partnership

• Ensure appropriate identity, access control, data protection, auditability, and segregation of duties.
• Define risk controls for AI agents, including permissions, tool access, human approval, transaction limits, and failure handling.
• Establish standards for AI evaluation, hallucination management, prompt security, and model/application monitoring.

Qualifications

Minimum

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent work experience in information technology
• 7+ years of experience in product ownership, technical product management, automation, software engineering, enterprise architecture, or a related field.

Desired

• Experience delivering enterprise technology products from concept through production.
• Strong understanding of automation technologies, Ansible Automation Platform, APIs, integration platforms, workflow engines, RPA, and AWS/Azure cloud technologies.
• Working knowledge of generative AI, LLMs, AI agents, RAG, prompt engineering, and AI application architectures.
• Ability to translate business processes into technical requirements and scalable solutions.
• Experience working with Agile/Scrum product development methodologies.
• Strong understanding of cybersecurity, identity, data protection, and enterprise technology governance.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and problem-solving skills.
• Experience building enterprise AI or intelligent automation products.
• Experience with platforms such as ServiceNow, Microsoft Power Platform, or similar technologies.
• Experience with AWS and Azure Cloud.
• Experience with enterprise AI platforms, AI gateways, agent frameworks, or LLM application platforms.
• Experience with APIs, event-driven architectures, microservices, Kubernetes, and cloud-native technologies.
• Experience establishing enterprise automation platforms or Centers of Excellence.
• Experience measuring automation ROI and managing an automation portfolio.
• Agile Certification