Head of Applications

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Head of Applications based in United States. This is a senior builder-GM opportunity focused on turning advanced multimodal AI capabilities into products customers actively use and value. You will define the application strategy, identify high-potential customer workflows, and determine where the technology can create meaningful differentiation. The role spans customer discovery, product strategy, prototyping, engineering, launch, adoption, monetization, and growth. You will work directly with users while partnering closely with research, engineering, design, commercial, revenue, and partnership teams. A major focus will be establishing AI-native product experiences with clear standards for quality, reliability, trust, latency, cost, and evaluation. You will recruit and lead a lean, high-performing team capable of moving rapidly from concept to production. This is an opportunity to shape an emerging application category while helping translate sophisticated AI technology into accessible experiences for non-technical users. Define the strategy and roadmap for the application layer, identifying priority users, workflows, markets, and opportunities while making disciplined decisions about what not to build. Conduct direct customer discovery, rapid prototyping, and market testing to identify focused product opportunities with strong potential for adoption and differentiation. Build and launch opinionated, AI-native applications for non-technical users, translating sophisticated multimodal AI capabilities into intuitive customer experiences. Own application outcomes end to end, including activation, engagement, retention, monetization, customer value, and long-term product adoption. Establish application-specific evaluation frameworks, task-success criteria, reliability and quality thresholds, human-review processes, and launch guardrails. Develop a continuous learning loop using customer conversations, product usage, behavioral data, and performance metrics to improve workflows and product experiences. Serve as the internal customer for shared platform and model teams, defining the APIs, capabilities, quality, latency, reliability, and cost requirements needed by applications. Partner closely with engineering, research, design, product, commercial, revenue, and partnerships teams to move products from prototypes to repeatable adoption. Work with strategic and lighthouse customers to uncover valuable use cases while transforming customer-specific insights into scalable products rather than one-off solutions. Recruit, mentor, and lead a lean team capable of discovering, building, launching, and iterating products with minimal coordination overhead. Establish a culture centered on speed, product craft, direct user engagement, accountability, and continuous learning. Build a clear portfolio thesis for future applications based on validated customer needs, market evidence, product performance, and the organization’s right to win. Within the first 90 days, identify priority users and workflows, select one or two focused application opportunities, launch working prototypes, establish a build-measure-learn cadence, define production-quality thresholds, clarify team boundaries, and make critical initial hires. Within six months, demonstrate credible progress toward product-market fit, establish repeatable growth and monetization, and turn early application learnings into broader advantages across technology, customer understanding, and go-to-market execution. Requirements 12+ years of experience across product management, product leadership, growth, product engineering, startup leadership, or closely related roles, preferably within early- to mid-stage software companies. Demonstrated experience taking products from zero to meaningful adoption and remaining accountable for outcomes after launch. Exceptional prod