Principal Digital Product Manager - Formulation AI Activation

PPG Industries

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

PPG is scaling Formulation AI to transform how we design, validate, and commercialize coatings. As Principal Digital Product Manager - Formulation AI Activation, you will set the enterprise activation strategy, influence functional direction, and drive adoption across S&T labs, manufacturing plants, and adjacent commercial workflows. You will operate with substantial latitude on broad, complex, and high-impact initiatives. It requires advanced judgment, cross-functional influence, and the ability to create scalable solutions. These solutions shape our AI-enabled future.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or global equivalent in a related discipline required
• 10+ years of increasing responsibility and complexity in digital product management, AI/ML product activation or coatings development.
• Background in formulations, materials science, chemistry, or process engineering.
• Experience leading scaled activation, change management, AI/ML adoption, and complex cross-functional transformation initiatives.
• Strong Agile/SAFe expertise.
• Willingness to travel 20–30%.

Nice To Haves

• Master's degree, MBA, PhD, or global equivalent preferred.

Responsibilities

• Define the enterprise activation strategy and roadmap for Formulation AI; set quarterly OKRs and success metrics for awareness, onboarding, enablement, expansion, and realized value.
• Translate scientific, operational, and commercial needs into activation requirements; articulate value propositions by persona and business context, including formulators, lab managers, process engineers, product managers, and senior functional leaders.
• Apply deep understanding of coatings technology, AI/ML, data ecosystems, and product activation to guide priorities, resolve unusually complex issues, and contribute thought leadership that advances the AI product discipline.
• Lead product discovery for broad and ambiguous adoption challenges; prioritize hypotheses and run experiments, pilots, and lighthouse deployments to de-risk adoption and maximize value delivery to internal customers.
• Build and iterate activation playbooks (pilot designs, lighthouse labs, cohort rollouts), including training curricula, office hours, “champions” networks, and in-product guidance.
• Anticipate internal and external business trends, identify process changes needed for organization-wide adoption, and partner with HR/L&D, Communications, Legal, Compliance, and business leaders on enablement and change narratives.
• Use analytics and advanced judgment to inform decisions across master data sources, data quality, integrations, and automation opportunities; establish telemetry for activation funnels, feature usage, value capture, and continuous improvement.
• Ensure model governance, compliance, safety, data access controls, provenance, auditability, and human-in-the-loop controls are embedded in activation motions and scalable operating procedures.
• Define and prioritize user stories across multiple team backlogs aligned to the activation roadmap; determine methods and procedures for new or special assignments and maintain features/components that enable scale, including onboarding, guidance, feedback loops, and reusable activation assets.
• Review completed work and accept stories; exercise independent judgment in resolving delivery tradeoffs and ensure cross-functional testing plans and UAT for new features that impact activation.
• Build and manage senior stakeholder networks across S&T, IT, Data/ML, manufacturing, commercial, legal/compliance, and external partners; provide clear updates, manage expectations, and influence decisions throughout the lifecycle of activation initiatives.
• Own financial planning and value realization for activation programs, including capital requests, OPEX planning, spend-rate monitoring, partner SOWs, vendor performance, budget tradeoffs, and quantified ROI.
• Coordinate across IT, Data, ML platform, business, and vendor teams; identify and resolve dependencies spanning data scientists, ML engineers, developers, product teams, and business users.
• Coach, mentor, and formally uplevel employees with less experience; develop playbooks, training materials, and best practices that strengthen PPG's AI product and activation discipline.

Benefits

• Opportunity to grow and develop your career in an environment that provides a fulfilling workplace for employees, creates an environment for continuous learning, and embraces the ideas and diversity of others.

What This Job Offers

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