Director of Product, Conversational AI

Ethos Life

3h•$184,000 - $324,000•Remote

About The Position

Ethos is seeking a Director of Product, Conversational AI to lead the development and strategy of their conversational AI function. This role is pivotal in shaping how Ethos interacts with customers through AI-driven conversations in the life insurance industry. The successful candidate will be the single-threaded owner of Conversational AI, responsible for defining its voice, building the playbook, and integrating it across various customer touchpoints. This is an opportunity to be at the forefront of a new communication medium in a critical financial services sector.

Requirements

8+ years of Product Management experience.
Meaningful experience working within customer-facing communication channels such as email, SMS, push, in-app messaging, voice, or chat.
Direct ownership of a communication channel as part of a larger product initiative is strongly preferred.
Director-level candidates should have led PM teams or complex cross-functional organizations.
Principal-level candidates should have a track record of owning category-defining products end-to-end.
Demonstrated ability to shape how a brand or product appears in a new channel, understanding its unique rhythm, conventions, and editorial voice.
Strong narrative and copywriting skills, with the ability to critically assess and improve AI-generated copy.
Proficiency in commercial acumen, including understanding and utilizing metrics like CAC, LTV, Payback, and Contribution Margin.
Experience shipping products built on frontier LLMs, or the ability to quickly learn and apply LLM concepts.
Knowledge of production prompt writing, evaluation, and drift prevention for LLMs.
A 'founder' mentality with a preference for shipping iteratively and a dislike for committees.
Experience building products from 0 to 1.

Nice To Haves

Owning a channel directly as part of a larger product initiative is strongly preferred.
Director-level candidates should have led PM teams or complex cross-functional orgs.
Principal-level candidates should have a track record of owning category-defining products end-to-end.
You can argue convincingly about why a 2018 SMS had to feel different from a 2012 email, and you have the receipts.
You can hear a 30-second AI bot opener and tell us exactly what is wrong with it.
You can look at a business case and instantly interrogate whether the assumptions are real or fantasy.
You have shipped products built on frontier LLMs, or you can credibly show that you will pick this up fast.
You prefer shipping rough and iterating over polishing in the dark.
You are allergic to committees.

Responsibilities

Define the editorial sensibility for all AI-generated conversation, including tone, cadence, openings, objection handling, and empathy.
Determine the strategic placement of conversational AI within the broader customer journey across call, text, email, and human agent interactions.
Ensure seamless continuity across communication mediums, allowing conversations to transition fluidly between voice, text, and human agents without customer friction.
Develop and own the multi-year vision and roadmap for Ethos's customer conversational AI strategy, encompassing voice and text, inbound and outbound, and all product lines.
Prioritize customer segments, products, and call types for conversational AI implementation based on unit economics and business impact, in partnership with Strategy & Ops.
Make strategic decisions regarding build vs. buy vs. partner options for the conversational AI stack to optimize engineering resources and create durable competitive advantages.
Drive end-to-end launches of conversational AI across various customer segments, including script design, guardrail implementation, quality assurance, compliance sign-off, and traffic ramp-up.
Focus on the critical elements of conversational craft, such as the initial interaction, pauses, interruptions, tone, and smooth transitions from AI to human agents.
Design the AI-to-human agent handoff process to ensure full context transfer, complete transcripts, and zero repetition for the customer.
Own the end-to-end evaluation strategy for conversational AI, defining quality rubrics (conversion, compliance, empathy) and implementing regression tests for all prompt or model changes.
Partner with Data & Analytics to evaluate AI and human conversations using a unified rubric, ensuring AI performance is benchmarked against human agents.
Establish and maintain a weekly iteration cadence for A/B testing, measurement, and improvement of the conversational AI.
Collaborate with Legal & Compliance to responsibly expand the capabilities of the AI and establish robust AI governance processes, including disclosure standards, recording and retention policies, state-by-state compliance, model documentation, and incident escalation paths.
Act as the product representative in discussions with external counsel and regulators, explaining the AI stack to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Work closely with Engineering to understand the technology, participate in architectural trade-offs, and ensure effective product development.
Engage with Sales & Ops teams to understand customer interactions, listen to calls, and build trust for AI traffic delegation.
Coordinate with Marketing & Lifecycle teams to integrate conversational AI into a unified customer journey, avoiding siloed experimentation.