Technical Product Manager, AI/ML Products

Our digital solutions team is more than a traditional IT organization. We are a team of passionate, collaborative, agile, inventive, customer-centric, results-oriented problem solvers. We are intellectually curious, love advancements in technology and seek to adapt technologies to drive Staples forward. We anticipate the needs of our customers and business partners and deliver reliable, customer-centric technology services.

The Senior Product Manager I, AI/ML Products is a key individual contributor within Digital Solutions, responsible for defining and delivering AI‑powered product experiences that improve customer acquisition, engagement, and retention across Staples’ digital ecosystem.

This role drives the product vision and strategy for AI/ML‑enabled experiences, connecting current business needs to a future state anchored in intelligent, personalized, and scalable commerce capabilities. Operating within an agile framework, this individual leads the end‑to‑end product lifecycle—from opportunity identification through delivery—leveraging customer insights, data, and cross‑functional collaboration.

The Senior Product Manager will own and advance roadmap initiatives that deliver measurable business value, improve profitability, and reduce friction in customer adoption. This role requires strong expertise in AI-driven product development, a strategic mindset, and the ability to translate complex data and evolving customer needs into actionable product strategies that extend intelligent Staples experiences across all commerce touchpoints.

What you’ll be doing: 

• Define and evolve the product vision and multi‑horizon strategy for AI/ML‑driven experiences across Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service.
• Define success metrics, measure outcomes, and continuously iterate on AI‑powered capabilities to improve acquisition, engagement, and retention.
• Translate complex business needs, customer problems, and AI opportunities into clearly defined product requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Own and prioritize the product backlog and sprint roadmap, balancing ROI, model performance, customer impact, and strategic alignment.
• Lead cross-functional collaboration with AI/ML Engineering, Data Science, MLOps, Platform, and business stakeholders to deliver scalable AI capabilities.
• Partner with internal teams and external vendors to design, build, and deploy AI-powered features that improve discovery, engagement, and conversion.
• Leverage analytics and experimentation to inform product decisions, including KPI tracking, A/B testing, model evaluation, and prompt experimentation.
• Identify customer trends, unmet needs, and areas of opportunity through behavioral data, research, and performance metrics.
• Communicate product roadmap, progress, and measurable impact to stakeholders through regular updates and executive-level presentations.
• Collaborate across merchandising, content, and customer data teams to embed AI-driven intelligence throughout the digital commerce experience.
• Provide mentorship and informal guidance to product peers, contributing to strong AI product practices across the team.

What you bring to the table: 

• Strategic thinker with strong business and technical acumen.
• Customer‑centric mindset with the ability to translate insights into AI‑driven solutions.
• Strong analytical, problem‑solving, and critical‑thinking skills.
• Exceptional problem-solving and critical thinking capabilities.
• Ability to influence without authority and drive cross-functional alignment.
• Strong communication and storytelling skills, including executive presence.
• Adaptability and comfort operating in ambiguity and rapidly evolving environments.
• Collaborative mindset with strong relationship-building skills.
• Results-driven with a strong sense of ownership and accountability .
• Demonstrated experience delivering AI/ML-enabled products or data-driven features.
• Proven ability to define product strategy and execute against roadmap initiatives end-to-end.
• Experience leveraging analytics to drive product decisions and measure business impact (e.g., conversion, engagement, retention).
• Hands-on experience with experimentation frameworks (A/B testing, model testing).
• Ability to translate business needs into product and technical requirements.
• Experience working cross-functionally with engineering, data science, and business teams.

What’s needed- Basic Qualifications: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or related field required
• 7+ years of progressively complex experience in product management, AI/ML products, or digital commerce platforms.

What’s needed- Preferred Qualifications: 

• Demonstrated track record of strong execution and experience partnering with technical teams to deliver results using Agile methodologies
• Experience translating AI capabilities into user-facing product experiences
• AI/ML fundamentals, data science literacy, and experience interpreting model performance metrics
• High-level knowledge of enterprise AI/ML platforms, data infrastructure, and integration touchpoints (e.g., Salesforce, AKS, Databricks)
• Experience with market research, competitive analysis, usability testing, and A/B testing frameworks
• Strong strategic, analytical, and critical thinking skills, with the ability to break down complex problems into iterative, actionable segments
• Proven ability to collaborate broadly with a flexible, positive approach—partnering across teams to define and solve complex problem statements
• Experience influencing, leading, or motivating cross-functional teams or stakeholders to drive execution and deliver results
• Experience working with AI/ML engineering teams on model development, deployment, and iteration (e.g., LLMs, Generative AI, NLP, recommendation systems)
• Familiarity with AI/ML platforms such as Databricks, MLflow, or similar tools
• Experience defining product requirements for AI-driven features, including prompt design, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, or agentic workflows
• Understanding of responsible AI practices, including model governance, bias mitigation, and AI observability

We Offer:

• Inclusive culture with associate-led Business Resource Groups
• 22 days of PTO and Holiday Schedule (7 observed paid holidays + 1 floating holiday)
• Online and Retail Discounts, Company Match 401(k), Physical and Mental Health Wellness programs, and more!

The salary range represents the expected compensation for this role at the time of posting. The specific base pay may be influenced by a variety of factors to include the candidate's experience, skill set, education, geography, business considerations, and internal equity. In addition to base pay, this role may be eligible for bonuses, or other forms of variable compensation.