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Product Strategy & Operations Lead

Sakana AI· Product
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Hybrid (Japan/Global)Full-timePosted today

About the role

First dedicated member of Sakana AI's Product Strategy & Operations, responsible for cross-product business planning, market/competitive research, operating cadence, enterprise delivery design, hiring, and cross-product initiatives across Sakana Chat, Marlin, and Fugu. Acts as the Head of Product’s operating partner, translating priorities into plans and driving execution in collaboration with Sales, Forward Deployed Engineers, researchers, and corporate functions. Role expected to grow into leading the Product Strategy & Operations function.

Responsibilities

  • Build and maintain the Product Team’s business plan, revenue and cost models, and KPI tracking in partnership with the Head of Product and corporate planning team.
  • Conduct market and competitive research across the portfolio and convert results into recommendations for leadership.
  • Steer the Product Team’s planning cycles, reviews, and cross-product prioritization; frame options and drive decisions to execution.
  • Define enterprise delivery scoping and handoffs with Sales and Forward Deployed Engineers.
  • Own hiring for the Product Team with Head of Product and Recruiting: define roles, design take-home tasks, run selection process.
  • Lead cross-product initiatives (enterprise requirements like security, governance, administration features, pricing/packaging, customer feedback loops) from problem definition to rollout.
  • Leverage AI agents to research, draft, and analyze, and build workflows on top of them.
  • Collaborate globally in a bilingual (Japanese/English) environment.

Qualifications

  • 3+ years in strategy consulting, business operations, corporate planning, or Chief of Staff at a technology company, or equivalent experience.
  • Enterprise B2B experience (delivery, requirements definition, system implementation, account management) including scoping with sales and engineering.
  • Technical fluency with software product design, architecture, APIs, deployment, infrastructure, and security; prior software engineering or system design experience is a plus.
  • Ability to autonomously drive initiatives in a fast-paced startup environment; present clear hypotheses amid ambiguity.
  • Strong analytical and writing skills; ability to produce structured analyses, financial/business models, and decision documents in Japanese and English.
  • Proven ability to influence engineers, sales, and executives who don’t report to you.
  • Daily hands-on use of LLM agents and ability to discuss generative AI with engineers/researchers.
  • Business-level Japanese (JLPT N1 guideline) and English.
  • Preferred: experience in CEO/CxO office, product operations, or AI product company.
  • Passion for practical AI in society and a track record of pursuing ambitious goals.

Skills

Required:Strategic PlanningMarket and Competitive ResearchEnterprise Delivery DesignHiring & Talent PlanningCross-Product Initiative LeadershipAI FluencyTechnical Literacy (Software)Written Communication (Japanese & English)

Benefits

  • CV and cover letter submitted in English.
Last updated Oct 25, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Sakana AI

Building Frontier AI in Japan

We are creating a new kind of foundation model based on nature-inspired intelligence.

AI research labTokyofoundation modelfrontier AIliquid-ai-recruiting-targetnature-inspired intelligence
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