What are the responsibilities and job description for the Product Owner-AI Solutions with Utility exp position at SPECTRAFORCE?
Product Owner - AI Solutions
6 Months
Oakland, CA 94612 (Hybrid - The role will be required to come at least 1 day per week)
**LOCAL CANDIDATES ONLY**
**Client laptop will be provided**
Role Summary: The AI Solutions Product Owner will lead the development and delivery of AI use cases that support Substation Operations, Asset Management, and related business functions. This role will serve as the key bridge between Operations, IT, data teams, analytics teams, vendors, and leadership. The Product Owner will be responsible for identifying high-value AI opportunities, gathering business requirements, defining data and model needs, validating data accuracy, and ensuring AI solutions are practical, trusted, and usable by the business. The role will help move AI initiatives from concept to pilot to production by making sure each use case has clear business value, strong data foundations, and measurable outcomes.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the intake, evaluation, and prioritization of AI use cases for Substation Operations.
- Partner with Operations, Asset Management, Engineering, IT, and field teams to understand business problems and translate them into AI solution requirements.
- Define clear use case scope, business value, success criteria, expected outcomes, and adoption requirements.
- Work with IT, data engineers, solution architects, and AI/ML teams to define data sources, data pipelines, model requirements, and integration needs.
- Support data validation across systems such as APM, SAP, TOA, DTA, PI, Sapient, work management tools, schedules, Snowflake, and reporting platforms.
- Partner with data stewards and SMEs to confirm source-of-truth logic, asset hierarchy, equipment identifiers, alarm definitions, inspection data, maintenance data, and operational rules.
- Help define AI model inputs, outputs, business rules, user experience, and decision-making workflows.
- Coordinate pilots, proof of concepts, testing, user feedback, and production rollout planning.
- Ensure AI outputs are explainable, actionable, and aligned with how Operations actually works.
- Partner with cybersecurity, data governance, and IT architecture teams to ensure solutions meet enterprise standards.
- Track benefits, risks, issues, dependencies, and adoption metrics for AI initiatives.
- Prepare leadership updates, business cases, roadmap materials, and funding justifications.
- Work with vendors and internal teams to evaluate AI capabilities and ensure vendor solutions align with business needs.
- Support change management, training, and communications so users understand and trust AI-enabled tools.
Required Skills and Experience
- Strong understanding of operations, asset management, maintenance, inspections, work management, or utility field processes.
- Experience working with IT, data, analytics, or digital transformation teams.
- Ability to translate business problems into technical requirements without losing the operational intent.
- Strong requirements gathering, process mapping, stakeholder engagement, and prioritization skills.
- Experience with enterprise systems such as SAP, APM, Snowflake, Power BI, PI, or similar platforms.
- Understanding of data quality, source-of-truth concepts, data lineage, and business data validation.
- Familiarity with AI, machine learning, predictive analytics, chatbots, automation, or advanced analytics use cases.
- Ability to lead pilots and proof of concepts from idea through implementation.
- Strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Ability to manage competing priorities and keep teams aligned around business value.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in electric utility, substation operations, transmission and distribution, asset management, or field operations.
- Experience supporting AI use cases related to asset health, alarms, inspections, maintenance optimization, work planning, or operational risk.
- Knowledge of Snowflake, Foundry, Cortex AI, Power BI, SAP, Bentley APM, PI historian, or similar platforms.
- Experience working with vendors on technology pilots or enterprise software implementations.
- Experience preparing executive presentations, funding requests, roadmaps, and implementation plans.