Product Builder: The new product manager in the age of AI

Key Takeaways

• The “Product Builder” is a hybrid profile that combines the strategic rigor of Product Management with the technical ability to build and execute functional solutions, particularly using low-code and generative AI tools.
• This role breaks down traditional silos between design (“those who think”) and development (“those who build”) by merging the Discovery and Delivery phases to accelerate value creation and reduce friction.
• With the rise of agentic AI, the Product Builder is essential for identifying use cases, designing robust autonomous workflows, and thus making organizations’ AI transformation concrete and scalable.

Six years ago, I first encountered the concept of a “Product Builder” while talking with teams at Payfit. Their mission was to leverage no-code to facilitate the deployment of their solutions across the startup’s various marketing zones. At the time, I was working at B&B Hotels on the product development of the group’s digital platform. It was a rather heavy architecture: website, mobile app, data bus, CRM, PMS, PSP. None of it easily lent itself to a Product Builder approach. And yet, everything was calling for it. The rollout challenges were massive, multiplied across several markets.

4 Years That Changed Everything

Today, I see Product profiles using Lovable or Firebase Studio to prototype demos as easily as they make a cup of coffee. They work on Cursor as if they have 10 years of coding experience. And I’m not just talking about Product Managers; Product Designers are following the trend too. GenAI has unlocked something incredible: the ability to think and build in the same motion.

But there’s still a gap. The tools are amazing, allowing us to build in hours what used to take weeks. Yet, organizations continue to separate those who think about products from those who build them. The former write specs, the latter code. In between: tickets, handoffs, friction, and wasted time.

The builder dimension is an opportunity to break out of this pattern to better deliver technology, but also—and more importantly—to anchor the AI transformation within organizations.

Not a Product Manager, Not a Developer: Both

So, who is the Product Builder? It’s not a product manager who “knows a little code.” Nor is it a developer who has transitioned to product. It’s not a tinkerer of POCs with no prospect of scaling, either.

It’s a profile that combines the rigor of Product Management with the ability to execute and directly build functional solutions. They master key generative AI and low-code technologies (LLMs, agentic workflows, vibecoding) to automate, prototype quickly, and prove feasibility. They never forget that a prototype is only valuable if it can scale.

They think like a product manager and act like a builder. They lead discovery, prioritize by value, and manage stakeholders. But in the same day, they can also prototype an interface, create an MVP for business automation, test a hypothesis with an AI agent, and demonstrate that an idea is viable without waiting for the next delivery window.

In practice, the effect of this hybridization is to quickly secure the pillars of Product Management: desirability, usability, viability, and feasibility. It accelerates the delivery of any product—digital, data, or AI. And it becomes absolutely critical for scaling AI products (especially agentic ones).

Agentic AI Is a Game-Changer

The product landscape is changing. Organizations want incremental tech value. Fast. With a demonstrated Proof of Value (PoV) for every initiative. The Product Builder naturally addresses this: their hybrid nature breaks the traditional waiting cycle by merging Discovery and Delivery.

Fewer handovers between product specs and technical construction. The Product Builder can prototype a functional use case right after a user interview. They use technology to validate hypotheses—for example, designing an AI agent to simulate a business process and get quick field feedback on the product’s real value.

But since 2024, agentic AI has opened an even wider frontier. We’re no longer talking about systems that respond to queries, but models capable of executing tasks autonomously, chaining actions, and interacting with external tools. The AI acts.

The potential for automating entire workflows is enormous, and it comes with a real integration challenge: identifying relevant use cases, designing robust workflows, ensuring their reliability, demonstrating measurable value creation, and ensuring coherent integration into existing processes.

The Product Builder is the key to this equation. They understand the business, and therefore the problem to be solved. They master the technology, and therefore the levers to address it and validate feasibility early on. This allows them to act quickly, materialize value rapidly, and adjust continuously. Without this, the AI transformation remains theoretical. With it, it becomes concrete and practical.

The Product Builder in 3 Years

From Solo Builder to Hybrid Teams

Tomorrow, it will be about squads of Product Builders + Engineers working in short cycles (2-4 weeks) to merge prototyping and industrialization from the POC stage. We are already testing this format at Converteo by promoting agile processes that allow it, like ShapeUp. The key is to eliminate the handoff, not just speed it up.

Agentic AI Will Become the Baseline

In 18 months, organizations that haven’t mastered workflow automation through AI agents will be left behind. The Product Builder will become the go-to expert for identifying, designing, and deploying these workflows at scale. We will see the emergence of reusable agentic workflow catalogs (much like design systems in UI/UX today).

Vertical Specialization by Business Domain

Product Builders in Finance, Retail, Healthcare. Because the real added value is the ability to translate a deep business understanding into tech solutions. The more a builder knows their domain, the more effective they are. A builder specializing in insurance will know the underwriting processes, pricing challenges, and Solvency II constraints. They will deliver in days what a generalist would take weeks to understand.

And what won’t change? The essence of the role. The Product Builder will remain a hybrid: between business and tech, strategy and execution, vision and pragmatism. The tools will evolve, specializations will become more defined, but this posture will remain at the core.

Product Builder: Converteo’s Commitment

My team and I have chosen to make this our main area of Product expertise, convinced that it is a critical lever for mastering Product Management in the years to come. We train these profiles. We deploy them to our clients. We support them in building AI products that scale. Because the AI transformation of companies will not be led by strategists writing roadmaps from their desks. It will be driven by people who know how to build, quickly and well.

The Product Builder doesn’t wait for the tech to be “ready” to act. They don’t wait for the business to have “specified everything” to build. They work with method in uncertainty, and they turn that uncertainty into value.

The window of opportunity is short. Organizations that can attract, train, and retain these profiles will have a major competitive advantage in the next 3 years. Because AI is not a tech topic. It’s a product topic.