Chief Product Officer (CPO)

Pantheon Data • Reston, VA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

Pantheon Data is seeking a technically fluent, commercially minded, and execution-oriented Chief Product Officer to lead the vision, strategy, delivery, and successful adoption of our AI-powered platform. This is a hands-on executive role. The CPO will own the full product lifecycle from roadmap through customer deployment and long-term growth, while building and leading a world-class product organization. The primary challenge in year one is accelerating the product roadmap to win new customers across commercial and government markets and establishing the team structure and delivery rigor to sustain that pace. We are looking for a builder. The right candidate has scaled AI or SaaS products at a startup or high-growth company, understands modern AI architectures at a technical level, and knows what it takes to get complex workflow automation products adopted inside large organizations. Prior experience in government markets is not required. What matters is technical depth, product instinct, and a track record of shipping things that customers actually use.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Business, or a related field.
• 15 or more years of progressive experience in enterprise software product leadership, including direct experience scaling AI or SaaS products at a startup or high-growth technology company.
• Demonstrated track record of shipping AI-powered or workflow automation products that achieved real, measurable customer adoption in complex organizational environments.
• Experience leading, growing, and formalizing product management teams including product managers, product owners, and business analysts.
• Hands-on working knowledge of RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures, vector databases, and graph databases as applied to enterprise AI products.
• Experience building or directing the development of AI agents for process and system automation, including familiarity with modern agentic frameworks such as LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, or equivalent.
• Experience with products designed for regulated or compliance-sensitive operating environments, such as healthcare, financial services, legal, defense, or government adjacent markets.
• Strong executive presence with a track record of influencing senior stakeholders, large enterprise buyers, and technical decision-makers.
• Experience with SaaS, cloud-native architectures, and modern data platforms in production enterprise environments.
• Working knowledge of Agile, human-centered design, and continuous delivery methodologies.
• Ability to work effectively remotely in cross-functional teams.
• Ability to meet deadlines and produce quality work.
• Proficient in Microsoft Suite software including Outlook, Word, Excel, SharePoint, and PowerPoint.

Nice To Haves

• MBA or Master's degree in a relevant field.
• Experience selling into or deploying within government, defense, healthcare, or other highly regulated customer environments.
• Familiarity with federal compliance frameworks such as FedRAMP, NIST, RMF, or Zero Trust Architecture as they relate to product and infrastructure design.
• Active security clearance or demonstrated ability to obtain one, preferred but not required.
• Experience designing AI data pipelines that incorporate structured and unstructured data sources across complex enterprise environments.
• Direct experience with records management, document workflow automation, or systems engineering processes in large organizations.
• Certifications in Product Management, AWS or Azure cloud platforms, Change Management, or related disciplines.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the product vision, strategy, and multi-year roadmap for Pantheon Data's AI platform across commercial and government markets.
• Lead and grow the product organization, formalizing roles, processes, career development, and delivery standards for a small existing team being built into a high-performing function.
• Establish roadmap governance and feature prioritization frameworks that balance speed to market with platform scalability and technical integrity.
• Serve as the executive owner of the full product lifecycle: concept, roadmap, development, deployment, adoption, sustainment, and enhancement.
• Lead the product vision for AI-powered workflow automation, with direct involvement in how agentic frameworks, RAG pipelines, vector databases, and graph databases are applied to automate complex organizational processes end to end.
• Partner with engineering leadership to define the architecture and capability roadmap for intelligent agents that replace or augment manual, paper-based workflows at scale.
• Evaluate and guide adoption of emerging agentic AI frameworks and data retrieval technologies to keep the platform competitive and technically differentiated.
• Ensure AI capabilities are designed to operate within the security, compliance, and data governance constraints of regulated customer environments.
• Champion human-centered design and end-user usability as foundational principles to drive real adoption inside large, complex organizations.
• Drive focused roadmap acceleration to build and ship capabilities that directly support winning new customers across target commercial and government verticals.
• Partner closely with sales, business development, and marketing teams to shape product-driven go-to-market strategies and differentiated positioning.
• Establish scalable onboarding and implementation methodologies that reduce time-to-value for new customers and lower deployment friction.
• Identify and prioritize investments that create reusable platform capability across multiple customer verticals rather than one-off customizations.
• Define and track product success metrics including adoption, retention, customer satisfaction, utilization, and revenue impact.
• Oversee successful deployment of the platform across new and existing customers, ensuring implementations meet performance, timeline, and customer success objectives.
• Establish repeatable deployment standards, onboarding frameworks, and change management models that scale as the customer base grows.
• Drive stakeholder training, operational readiness, and user adoption programs to maximize platform utilization and customer outcomes.
• Identify and resolve implementation risks, integration challenges, and adoption barriers early in each engagement.
• Serve as a credible product authority and executive point of contact for customers, prospects, and partners across both commercial and government markets.
• Translate complex operational requirements and workflow pain points into clear, prioritized product capabilities.
• Build lasting customer relationships that drive expansion, renewals, and referrals into new market segments.
• Maintain a strong external presence, including customer advisory engagement, industry events, and market feedback loops that continuously inform the roadmap.
• Grow and formalize the existing product team into a structured, high-performing organization with clear ownership, delivery cadence, and accountability.
• Hire and develop product managers, product owners, and business analysts with technical fluency in AI-driven product development and strong customer empathy.
• Foster a culture of speed, technical curiosity, customer focus, and continuous improvement.
• Ensure the platform is designed and delivered to meet the security, privacy, and compliance requirements of regulated customer environments, including relevant federal standards where applicable.
• Partner with engineering and security teams to build compliance readiness into the product rather than bolting it on after the fact.
• Establish product release governance and implementation readiness processes that scale with customer growth.

Benefits

• Competitive salaries and benefits
• SmartBenefits through the Washington Metro Area Transportation Authority
• Tuition assistance may be available for continuing education expenses and certifications related to their position.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive