Principal Product Manager, Customer-Deployed

RELX•Houston, TX

23d

About The Position

ICIS is building the first forward-deployed product team in its history, and this role will lead that effort. Working directly with chemicals customers, you will define what customer-embedded, discovery-led product development looks like at ICIS by identifying high-value problems, validating solutions quickly, and demonstrating measurable commercial value. You will lead a cross-functional squad, own customer relationships, and guide initiatives from discovery through to successful pilots and scalable patterns.

Requirements

A track record in customer-back, forward-deployed or embedded product work. You have shipped intelligence, workflow or platform outcomes into complex customer organisations and can clearly demonstrate what shipped, who used it, and the metric it improved. Experience from organisations operating similar models is relevant, as is experience in strategy or transformation consulting followed by ownership of a shipped customer outcome.
Customer judgement at senior levels. You distinguish stated requests from underlying problems, identify unstated decision constraints, and build the trust needed to uncover what customers may not share in a commercial conversation.
Leadership through influence. You lead cross-functional teams without formal authority, elevate standards around you, and set the tone for how ICIS operates within customer environments.
Commercial judgement in the field. You translate customer reality into product direction rather than feature requests, make clear prioritisation decisions, and identify whether blockers are product, platform, integration, execution, or change-management related.
Technical fluency to direct delivery. You can engage credibly with engineering and data science teams, understand modern AI production patterns such as RAG, evals, agents, tool use, and MCP, and have recent experience building or prototyping AI-driven solutions.
Comfort working in ambiguity. You create structure where none exists, make decisions with incomplete information, and remain accountable through implementation and measurable outcomes.
Communication that adjusts for audience. You write and speak at the appropriate level of detail for customers, technical stakeholders, and senior leadership.
Alignment with the Data Services Mindset — All Curious, All Lead, All Purposeful — and RELX Leadership Excellence, particularly Prioritize Customers, Deliver Sustainable Performance, and Embrace Curiosity. You operate in line with RELX Responsible AI Principles.

Responsibilities

Lead two to three active forward-deployed initiatives with named chemicals customers at any one time.
Deliver the first working proof of concept to a customer within 60 days of joining.
Drive the first paid pilot to go live within one quarter.
Own the squad’s discovery and delivery rhythm, ensuring weekly customer engagement.
Maintain a live discovery view for every initiative.
Act as the taste gate for all outputs, ensuring no PRD is created without a working proof of concept.
Make decisions to kill, pivot, or promote discovery tracks based on evidence and customer value.
Create documented playbooks and enablement materials for Sales and central productisation teams when patterns are validated.