Product Owner vacatures in Leiden

AI Product Manager (Agentic AI)

Location: NL or UK | Full-time |

Are you a Product Manager who is genuinely hands-on with AI — someone who thrives at the intersection of operational complexity, agent design, and real business impact? Do you enjoy working closely with engineers, not just directing them, while driving discovery, shaping roadmaps, and making confident go/no-go decisions based on evaluation outcomes?

We are looking for an AI Product Manager to own the full lifecycle of AI agent development for HeadFirst Group’s Agentic AI Strike Team. In this role, you will lead a dedicated team of AI/ML and platform engineers building and deploying intelligent agents that automate operational workflows across the organisation.

About the Role

You will be part of HeadFirst Group’s CPTO organisation, embedded in the Agentic AI Team alongside AI/ML and platform engineers. The team operates on a modern AI stack built on Databricks and Mosaic AI, and works closely with the broader Data & AI division and an active AI Council.

This is a foundational role — you are not joining an established AI product team, you are building one. That means real autonomy, real accountability, and a direct line between the decisions you make and the outcomes the business sees. HeadFirst Group has AI frontrunners at all levels of the organisation who are actively building with AI. You’ll be in good company.

Your Impact

You own the AI product backlog and the full agent lifecycle: discovery, hypothesis validation, agent design, prompt authoring, deployment, evaluation, and post-launch iteration. Your first domain is the Shared Service Center — contracting, invoicing, and compliance operations that are highly manual and ripe for automation.

The challenge isn’t the AI itself; it’s decomposing complex operational processes into well-scoped automation candidates and deciding what gets built by the strike team versus what belongs in the platform. That boundary is yours to define and defend, in close collaboration with our platform product teams.

You are in the room with engineers — authoring and iterating prompts, shaping evaluation sets, making production-readiness calls. At the same time, you bring the product discipline to keep the team focused on outcomes, aligning stakeholders across CPTO, operations, and the CBO. As you deliver measurable results, your scope grows toward the broader agent marketplace vision.

What You Will Do

• Own the AI product backlog and agent development lifecycle for the Agentic AI Strike Team.
• Decompose operational workflows into discrete tasks and determine what gets automated by the strike team versus embedded in the platform.
• Lead continuous discovery by observing real workflows, interviewing stakeholders, running rapid prototypes, and validating hypotheses.
• Rank pain points by frequency and severity; assess AI-solvability versus workflow redesign, RPA, or platform investment.
• Author and iterate production-grade prompts — system instructions, input/output contracts, worked examples — with the same rigour as code.
• Build structured evaluation sets and select the right mix of human review and automated scoring.
• Define three-layer success metrics: what the user feels, what the business captures, what the model delivers.
• Lead launch and roll-out decisions; own post-launch monitoring, feedback triage, and continuous iteration.
• Drive stakeholder alignment across product, engineering, operational leadership, and the AI Council.
• Contribute governance input to the Citizen AI Developer programme; ensure responsible AI practices including EU AI Act awareness.

What We Offer

• A high-visibility, foundational role in HeadFirst Group’s transformation into an AI-powered Workforce-as-a-Service platform.
• The opportunity to build a new team and discipline from the ground up.
• Direct impact on operational efficiency and business model innovation through AI agent deployment.
• Access to the latest Databricks and Mosaic AI capabilities in a production environment.
• A CPTO organisation with AI frontrunners at all levels, that values structured thinking and long-term platform health.

What We Expect From You

• 5+ years of product management experience, with at least 2 years in an AI/ML, data, or automation context.
• Strong discovery skills — you observe real workflows, sit with users, and decompose complexity into structured automation opportunities.
• Hands-on with AI tools: daily you prototype, test, and iterate. You work with AI, not just manage it.
• Strong understanding of LLMs, agentic AI, RAG pipelines, prompt engineering, and agent design patterns.
• Able to contribute to agent architecture and evaluation decisions alongside engineers.
• Familiarity with the MLOps lifecycle: training, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
• Understanding of AI evaluation frameworks such as LLM-as-Judge, RAGAS, or Quotient AI.
• Experience with outcome-based OKRs, hypothesis-driven development, and iterative delivery.
• Awareness of EU AI Act implications and responsible AI practices in a personal-data-intensive context.

Nice to Have

• Background in HRTech, staffing, workforce management, or shared service operations.
• Completion of or enrolment in a recognised AI Product Management programme.
• Familiarity with Databricks, Unity Catalog, or Mosaic AI from a product perspective.
• Experience with process mining or operational analytics as input for automation strategy.
• Experience insourcing capabilities previously delivered by external partners.

Mobility budget or Lease car: No

Brand: HeadFirst Group