Head of Product AI

Smith+Nephew•Andover, MA

1d•$254,000 - $362,875•Hybrid

About The Position

Life Unlimited. At Smith+Nephew we design and manufacture technology that takes the limits off living. The Head of Product, AI is responsible for defining and executing the enterprise AI product strategy, transforming AI into a durable competitive advantage across the company’s portfolio and internal product development ecosystem. This leader owns the end‑to‑end lifecycle of AI‑enabled products, platforms, and capabilities—ensuring AI is systematically designed, built, tested, deployed, and scaled to deliver differentiated customer value and measurable productivity gains. Beyond customer‑facing features, the role plays a critical leadership function in embedding AI across product development, R&D, and engineering workflows, shaping how products are conceived, delivered, and evolved. This is a highly cross‑functional role requiring deep cross-functional collaboration including NPD Engineering, Early Innovation teams, and IT leaders, as well as strong influence across business units.

Requirements

10+ years of product leadership experience, preferably in R&D‑intensive, platform‑driven, or technology‑first organizations.
Demonstrated success delivering AI‑powered products and platforms from concept through scale.
Strong background working with R&D, or applied research teams, with the ability to translate technical capabilities into product value.
Proven ability to influence without direct authority in complex, matrixed organizations.

Nice To Haves

Experience as a senior leader as Sr. Director/VP
Experience driving AI transformation of internal workflows, not just customer features.
Familiarity with developer tooling, and AI assisted software development.
Experience operating in regulated or IP sensitive environments.

Responsibilities

Own the AI product portfolio, including embedded AI features, AI services, and internal platforms.
Define requirements and roadmaps for AI capabilities that deliver differentiated customer value.
Partner with research and engineering to move models from experimentation to production at scale.
Establish reusable AI components (models, APIs, tooling) to reduce duplication across teams.
Design and lead an AI first NPD framework that accelerates: Customer discovery and insights, Concept generation and prioritization, Design and prototyping, Development and testing, Launch readiness and post-launch learning.
Identify opportunities to apply AI across the NPD lifecycle, including: Market and customer insight generation, Requirements synthesis and backlog creation, Code generation, test automation, and simulation, Experimentation, A/B testing, and feedback analysis.
Standardize AI workflows, tools, and best practices across product and R&D teams.
Act as the enterprise product owner for AI in R&D, driving adoption across business units.
Partner with Product, Engineering, Design, Data, and IT leaders to embed AI into daily workflows.
Define success metrics for AI-driven productivity, speed, and quality improvements.