Principal Group Product Manager- AL Labs

Paylocity is an award-winning provider of cloud-based HR and payroll software solutions, offering the most complete platform for the modern workforce. The company has become one of the fastest-growing HCM software providers worldwide by offering an intuitive, easy-to-use product suite that helps businesses automate and streamline HR and payroll processes, attract and retain talent, and build a strong workplace culture.

While traditional HR and payroll providers automate basic HR processes such as payroll and benefits administration, Paylocity goes further by developing tools that HR and businesses need to compete for talent and deliver against the expectations of the modern workforce. 

We give our employees what they need to succeed, including great benefits and perks! We offer medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and a 401(k) match, as well as perks that support you, your family, and your finances. And if it’s career development you desire, we provide that, too! At Paylocity, people matter most and have always been at the heart of our business.

Help Paylocity enhance communication and enable employees to connect, collaborate, and create from anywhere with a position in Product & Technology!

Want to develop the strategies and principles needed to deliver compelling software? Join our team and help us enhance our all-in-one software platform, elevate our one-of-a-kind technology, and improve the employee experience. 

Position Overview: 

AL Labs is an incubation team focused on exploring how artificial intelligence can create meaningful new value for Paylocity customers and improve how products are conceived, built, validated, and scaled. The Principal Group Product Manager will work directly with the Chief Innovation Officer to establish the team’s direction and portfolio of experiments, moving ideas from early discovery through evidence-based investment decisions and, when appropriate, transition into scaled product teams. 

This is a hands-on leadership role. The team will begin with the leader as its first and only dedicated member of Product Management, with the opportunity to grow over time as the portfolio and demonstrated impact expand. The successful candidate must be equally comfortable shaping strategy with executives, working directly with Product, Engineering, UX, Data, Security, Legal, and go-to-market partners, and stepping into the details required to run experiments and create momentum. 

The role requires experience in an incubator, venture studio, innovation lab, zero-to-one product environment, or a comparable setting where ambiguity is high and speed of learning matters. It also requires direct experience operating within and ideally helping create an AI-driven product development lifecycle (PDLC) that uses AI responsibly to accelerate discovery, prototyping, development, testing, launch, and continuous improvement.

Primary Responsibilities: 

The responsibilities below represent the primary duties of the position. Other duties may be assigned as needed. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. 

• Co-Create and lead the vision, strategy, and operating model for AL Labs, connecting experimentation to Paylocity’s broader product, platform, and AI strategy. 
• Build a portfolio of high-potential AI opportunities informed by customer needs, market shifts, business priorities, technical feasibility, and responsible-AI considerations. 
• Design a disciplined incubation process that moves concepts through problem validation, rapid prototyping, customer testing, measurable experiments, investment decisions, and transition or closure. 
• Personally lead early discovery and experimentation while establishing the case, structure, and talent plan for the team to grow over time. 
• Establish clear learning goals, hypotheses, success measures, decision gates, and evidence standards so the organization can invest, pivot, scale, or stop with confidence. 
• Operate across multiple levels of the organization, from executive leadership to individual contributors, to align stakeholders, remove barriers, and create sponsorship for experiments. 
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, UX, Data, Architecture, Security, Privacy, Legal, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Service, and Customer Success to test ideas responsibly and accelerate learning. 
• Create strong pathways for successful experiments to transition into durable product teams, including a clear product narrative, validated customer value, technical context, risks, metrics, and recommended ownership. 
• Help define and evolve an AI-driven PDLC, embedding practical AI use across product discovery, research synthesis, prototyping, requirements, engineering, quality, instrumentation, launch, and iteration. 
• Identify where AI can improve the speed, quality, and learning velocity of product development while maintaining appropriate human judgment, security, privacy, governance, and quality controls. 
• Use customer feedback, product data, market intelligence, and experiment results to communicate what was learned and recommend next actions. 
• Make complex opportunities tangible through prototypes, narratives, demos, business cases, and concise executive communication. 
• Build reusable methods, tools, templates, and playbooks that strengthen experimentation and AI-enabled product development across the broader organization. 
• Foster a culture of curiosity, urgency, constructive challenge, and continuous learning, where teams are rewarded for evidence and outcomes rather than activity. 
• As the team grows, recruit, lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing, multidisciplinary group capable of moving between exploration and execution. 
• Create mechanisms, systems, processes, and leadership practices that reinforce Paylocity values throughout the work. 

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in a related field, or equivalent practical experience. 
• 8+ years of experience in product management, innovation, product strategy, venture building, or a related field, including 3+ years in a senior leadership role within a fast-paced, technology-driven environment. 
• Demonstrated experience in an incubator, innovation lab, venture studio, zero-to-one product team, or similar high-ambiguity environment. 
• Direct experience operating within an AI-driven PDLC; experience helping design, implement, or scale an AI-enabled product development model is strongly preferred. 
• Proven ability to take ambiguous customer or business problems from early framing through experimentation, validation, and a clear investment recommendation. 
• Working knowledge of modern AI product patterns, including generative AI, agents, model evaluation, human-in-the-loop design, experimentation, and responsible-AI risk management. 
• Experience defining experiment hypotheses, measurable outcomes, decision criteria, and scalable handoffs rather than relying on activity-based measures. 
• Ability to influence and align stakeholders at all levels of the organization without depending on formal authority. 
• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to translate complex technical and product concepts into clear decisions for executive, technical, commercial, and customer audiences. 
• Strong cross-functional leadership experience with Product, Engineering, UX, Data, Security, Privacy, Legal, and go-to-market teams. 
• Comfort operating as a player-coach: setting strategy while personally driving discovery, prototypes, customer learning, and executive-ready recommendations. 
• Demonstrated sound judgment in balancing speed, customer value, technical feasibility, business viability, responsible AI, privacy, security, and long-term scalability. 
• Experience building a team, capability, or operating model from the ground up is strongly preferred. 
• A strong sense of curiosity, resilience, and adaptability, with a track record of learning quickly and challenging established assumptions constructively. 

Leadership Profile: 

• Builder: Creates clarity, structure, and momentum where a playbook does not yet exist. 
• Experimenter: Uses evidence to learn quickly and treats stopping or redirecting work as a successful outcome when the data supports it. 
• Enterprise connector: Builds trust across organizational boundaries and brings the right people together around a shared problem. 
• AI-native product leader: Understands both the customer possibilities and delivery implications of AI, and can evolve how teams build products. 
• Pragmatic storyteller: Makes emerging ideas concrete without overstating certainty or value. 
• Talent multiplier: Begins as a hands-on individual leader and can intentionally build the team as the opportunity matures. 

 Physical Requirements:

• Ability to sit for extended periods. The role requires sitting at a desk or workstation for long periods, typically 7–8 hours a day. 
• Ability to operate computer and phone systems, type, and use multiple software programs and inquiries simultaneously. 

Paylocity is an equal-opportunity employer. Paylocity is committed to the full inclusion of all individuals. We recruit, train, compensate, and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, veteran status, and other protected status as required by applicable law. At Paylocity, we believe diversity makes us better.

We embrace and encourage our employees’ differences in age, culture, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion or spiritual belief, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other characteristics that make our employees unique. We actively cultivate these differences through our employee resource groups (ERGs), employee experiences, perspectives, talents, and approaches to drive innovation in the software and services we provide our customers.

We comply with federal and state disability laws and make reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. To request reasonable accommodation in the job application or interview process, please contact accessibility@paylocity.com. This email address is exclusively designated for such requests, aligning with federal and state disability laws. Please do not send resumes to this email address, as they will be removed.

This role can be performed from any office in the US. The pay range for this position is $170,000/yr - $243,300/yr; however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. This position is eligible for an annual restricted stock unit grant based on individual performance in addition to a full range of benefits outlined here. This information is provided per the relevant state and local pay transparency laws for the location in which this position will be performed. Base pay information is based on market location. Applicants should apply via www.paylocity.com/careers.