Product Director

About Sand

Sand Technologies is a global Physical AI company using data and AI to make critical industries work better. We partner with governments, cities and enterprises to improve how essential systems operate across healthcare, water, energy, telecommunications and infrastructure.

Our work delivers proven real-world impact. We have built AI systems that help manage London’s water supply, supported telecom network planning across hundreds of cities, and developed digital healthcare platforms serving tens of millions of people across Africa. From intelligent command centers to AI-powered infrastructure platforms, we help organizations sense, analyze and act in complex environments.

Our people are ambitious, curious and relentlessly practical. Our teams work alongside clients in the field, solving hard problems and deploying solutions that last. With colleagues across Africa, Europe, the UK and the US, we operate across the full stack - from research and engineering to deployment and capability building.

Our mission is simple: to harness AI to solve humanity’s most pressing challenges.

About the role

The primary responsibility of this role is to validate the US private sector market for Sand's products: finding where there is real, repeatable demand, which products fit, and what it would take to win. You will work alongside the AI Solutions Director, Technical Leads and the forward-deployed engineering teams in the US, turning customer evidence into clear product and go-to-market decisions. This is a player-manager role: you will do the discovery and commercial work yourself while shaping the product direction. 

What you’ll do

• Lead structured market validation across target US private sector segments running buyer and user discovery to establish problem severity, budget, buying process and alternatives.
• Define ideal customer profiles and jobs-to-be-done for each shortlisted segment, and test Sand's existing products and accelerators against them.
• Map the US competitive landscape and pricing norms, and position Sand clearly against incumbents and credible alternatives.
• Identify the gaps between Sand's current products and what the US market requires (regulation, security and compliance, data residency, procurement, integration), and agree what to build, adapt or drop with engineering.
• Design and run pilots and design-partner engagements with the US forward-deployed teams, with success criteria agreed up front.
• Build the commercial case: market sizing, pricing and packaging, sales-cycle and unit-economics assumptions.
• Be the voice of the US customer to product and engineering, and give leadership honest continue / adapt / stop recommendations at defined checkpoints.
• Be on the ground with US clients and prospects, and work directly with the team delivering in the field.

Who you are

• 10+ years in product management or product leadership in B2B enterprise, data, AI or industrial technology, including at least 3 years at director level or equivalent.
• A track record of taking a product into a new market or validating a new segment, and the discipline to stop things that are not working.
• Established US based network and credibility with buyers in at least one of our key industries (Utilities, Energy, Water, Telecoms, Healthcare).
• Experience selling to or working alongside operational and technical stakeholders in regulated, critical-infrastructure environments.
• Strong commercial instincts: pricing, packaging, market sizing and the economics of an enterprise sales cycle.
• Technical fluency with data and AI platforms, able to hold your own with client architects and Sand engineers.
• Able to translate technical trade-offs for non-technical stakeholders and communicate to executive and customer audiences.
• Able to work autonomously in a small, internationally distributed team while staying tightly coordinated with the wider organisation.
• Relevant Bachelor's degree; MBA or equivalent advantageous. 
• Have the right to work in the US, without sponsorship.
• Ability and willingness to travel up to 80% to clients.

Advantageous experience

• Experience in utilities or other regulated, asset-intensive sectors, particularly operational technology, SCADA integration or control-room environments.
• Prior startup or market-entry experience; experience working with forward-deployed or solutions engineering teams.
• Familiarity with US procurement, compliance and security frameworks (for example SOC 2, state-level utility regulation).

What you’ll bring

• Genuine product leadership breadth. Discovery, strategy, commercial and technical, not just roadmap management.
• Agency. You don't need all the requirements or someone telling you exactly what they want. Given a problem and a direction, you work your way around obstacles to an outcome.
• Fast learning as a default state. New domain, new sector, new constraint, never intimidated by a problem you haven't seen before.
• Evidence over opinion. You can form hypotheses, test them with customers, and are comfortable telling leadership when the data says no.
• Sleeves rolled up, always. You get stuff done, then you own that stuff.

How we work

Due to the highly collaborative and internationally distributed nature of our work, successful candidates must be comfortable operating in small teams while contributing to larger, globally coordinated efforts. A strong sense of ownership, self-motivation and discipline in maintaining clear and consistent communication through virtual collaboration tools and video conferencing is essential.