---
title: 'Director, Product Strategy at Proto'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-product-strategy-proto-new-york-new-york-ngg0a7bvr0f3'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Director, Product Strategy at Proto

- **Company:** Proto
- **Location:** New York New York, United States
- **Posted:** 2026-08-20
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/proto/jobs/6148868004

## Job description

Director, Product Strategy

Proto leads innovation and transformation efforts for large organizations, often through the creation of new products, services, and platforms. The work involves understanding user needs, system behavior, and technical possibilities, and using that understanding to define viable directions, concepts, and solutions that unlock new value and growth potential.

The Director, Product Strategy leads this work by structuring complex problem spaces and driving decision-making across uncertainty. The role requires fluency in design and technology, as well as strategy: shaping product and experience concepts, evaluating technical implications, and guiding teams toward solutions that are both ambitious and buildable. Directors engage directly with the work and ensure that direction is grounded in real constraints while still opening up new possibilities.

What you will do:

- Frame opportunities: Define the problem space, objectives, and decision criteria that guide product and experience work;
- Model systems and behavior: Develop system-level views of users, behaviors, constraints, and dependencies to inform solution design;
- Shape 0-1 solutions: Work with commercial strategy, design, and technology leads to define product, service, and experience concepts and guide them through prototyping and piloting and into execution;
- Enable teams: Lead, coach, and develop direct reports and project teams, setting clear expectations, providing feedback, and raising the quality of work over time;
- Lead client decision-making: Facilitate working sessions and present work to executive audiences clearly and directly, using narrative, evidence, and concrete artifacts to support decisions;
- Integrate cross-disciplinary insight: Synthesize inputs across disciplines to build shared understanding and inform direction;
- Advance the practice: Contribute to internal methods, frameworks, and external points of view that improve clarity, consistency, and quality across engagements.

## Qualifications

- 10+ years of relevant experience in product strategy, experience strategy, service or systems design, innovation consulting, product leadership, or venture-building contexts;
- Undergraduate and/or graduate degree in engineering, design, economics, social sciences, or a related discipline preferred;
- Proven ability to own complex projects end-to-end, including setting direction and being accountable for outcomes;
- Experience turning ambiguous challenges into structured recommendations that inform product, investment, or organizational decisions;
- Experience partnering with design and engineering teams to develop product concepts, with enough technical fluency to engage credibly on constraints and tradeoffs;
- Proven ability to lead senior stakeholders through uncertain or high-stakes decisions;
- Exceptional analytical, synthesis, and communication skills, with a track record of producing clear, decision-oriented narratives and artifacts;
- Ability to stay focused under pressure, manage multiple priorities, and deliver high-quality work even when things are unclear or timelines are tight;
- Good judgment and low ego. Able to stay calm under pressure and handle disagreement constructively.

In New York City, the base salary for this position is $170,000-$190,000. Individual compensation varies based on job-related factors including years of relevant skills and experience, level of responsibility, and qualifications. This position is based out of the New York office and reports into our Partner, Managing Director of Experience.

Proto is a New York based company with offices at 120 Broadway, 34th Floor. Our staff is encouraged to work-from-office on days of their choosing based on personal preferences, collaboration moments, client meetings, and all-company gatherings. We also support workplace flexibility and have made work-from-anywhere available to all staff (within a 3-hour time zone of eastern standard time zone). Our core business hours are generally 9:30am-6:00pm EST; however, due to our client service model and collaborative working culture, individual working hours fluctuate to reflect client deadlines and deliverables.

Interested in applying? Right this way.

## About Proto

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Proto provides inclusive AI workflows for emerging markets, specializing in sovereign AI solutions for regulators, public services, and enterprises.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: Waterloo, Canada (with regional hubs in Kigali, Rwanda and Bonifacio Global City, Philippines)
- **Founded**: 2018
- **Founders**: Curtis Matlock (CEO), with co-founders Noella Dushime, Nino Columna, Weiying Kok, and Andy Jung

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: AI, government technology, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications
- **Target customers**: B2B – central banks, government agencies, healthcare providers, financial institutions, telcos; primarily in emerging markets (Africa, Southeast Asia)
- **Mission**: “Deploy inclusive AI workflows” and “ensure equal access to AI regardless of language, income or geography”

## Products & Services
- **Proto AI Agent**: Multilingual, multimodal AI agent for customer engagement, grievance redress, scam reporting, and dispute resolution. Supports voice, text, and local languages. Deployed on sovereign infrastructure.
- **Inbox Co-pilot**: AI-powered mediation and translation tool that resolves disputes by training on conversation history.
- **Insight Advisor**: Analytics and emotion analysis engine that generates actionable insights from customer interactions and workspace data.
- **Embedded Advisors & Co-pilots**: Customizable AI assistants for regulated entities (HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 compliant).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding – Series A raised in 2022 (amount not publicly disclosed). Processes over 35 million AI interactions across 20+ languages as of 2025.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Gates Foundation, Government of Canada, African Development Bank, National Bank of Rwanda, Central Bank of the Philippines, The Medical City, PhilCare, FINCA. Accelerator alumni of NextAI and Creative Destruction Lab. Recognized by Inclusive Fintech 50 (Visa, MetLife, IFC, Accion) and G20 TechSprint.
- **Growth Signals**: Expanded into Sub-Saharan Africa (2021), partnered with Gates Foundation and Canada’s government for national AI systems (2024), recognized by G20 TechSprint for grievance redress work (2025). Focus on anti-scam, patient experience, and insight advisor use cases (2026).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Sovereign AI deployments**: Models run on dedicated, locally hosted infrastructure, appealing to governments and regulated entities.
- **Local language support**: Covers low-resource and mixed languages (e.g., Tagalog, Kinyarwanda) that major AI platforms ignore.
- **Security & compliance**: SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, ISO 27001, GDPR – critical for public sector and healthcare clients.
- **Reverse innovation**: Builds and proves AI in emerging markets before redeploying in developed economies.
- **Deep domain expertise**: Focus on grievance redress, financial inclusion, and patient experience – niche but high-impact.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Anti-scam center, patient experience optimization, and Insight Advisor use cases to maximize social impact.
- **Growth direction**: Scaling sovereign AI across more low- and middle-income countries, deepening partnerships with central banks and health ministries.

## Why Work Here
- **Remote-first**: Full remote work from anywhere with stable internet.
- **Culture & values**: Strong emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion; refugee-friendly hiring; global team spanning Asia, Africa, and North America.
- **Compensation & perks**: High & equal salaries (location-adjusted), stock options for leadership roles, visa support, tech device reimbursement, and company retreats.
- **Impact**: Work on projects that directly improve financial inclusion, healthcare access, and citizen engagement in underserved communities.
- **Engineering culture**: Multinational team led by NLP experts; focus on practical AI for real-world constraints (low bandwidth, local languages).

## Sources
1. [proto.cx/careers](https://www.proto.cx/careers)
2. [proto.cx](https://www.proto.cx/)
3. [proto.cx/about](https://www.proto.cx/about)
4. [LinkedIn](https://ca.linkedin.com/company/proto-cx)
5. [FlexJobs](https://www.flexjobs.com/remote-jobs/company/protocx)

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