AI Product Executive & Platform Architect
Traverse City, Michigan · clay.burns@gmail.com · linkedin.com/in/cjeburns
AI-centric product executive, product strategist, and principal builder with 11 years of progressive product, data, analytics, marketplace, and platform leadership at SoftBank Vision Fund 2-backed LTK. Translates ambiguous customer, market, technical, and operating problems into scalable products and measurable commercial outcomes.
Combines product strategy, customer discovery, data science, technical architecture, agent-enabled product development, marketplace dynamics, monetization, payments, attribution, and go-to-market strategy. Experienced leading product portfolios, developing product leaders, aligning Product and Engineering organizations, and staying hands-on through QA, launch, measurement, and iteration.
AI-centric Principal Product Manager, Director of Product, VP Product, and Head of Product roles with a player-coach mandate — particularly across agentic products, marketplaces, data platforms, commerce, energy, defense or drone technology, and public-service platforms.
- 0-to-1 platform architecture: Served as product architect for LTK's new Brand Platform, informed by direct customer research and used for active campaign work by 5K+ brands.
- $30B+ attributed sales: Launched and scaled Hyperlink to 250K+ creators.
- Applied AI: Served as data product designer for Match.AI, defining fit and ROAS vectors and a collaborative-filtering approach, then validating the model with managed-service teams before productization.
- Agent-ready delivery: Co-designed a six-stage, AI-enabled product development system that reduced Ideation-to-Development-start time from eight weeks to four for initiatives not requiring new user research.
- Leadership leverage: Managed and developed product leaders, helping them expand scope and supporting multiple promotions.
Product Strategy & Vision · Product Portfolio Leadership · AI Product Strategy · Agentic Workflows · Product Operating Models · Platform Strategy · Marketplace Products · Product-Led Growth · Monetization · Pricing & Packaging · Payments · Product Analytics · Attribution & Measurement · Machine Learning · B2B SaaS · Go-to-Market Strategy · Customer Discovery · Product Operations · Technical Product Management · Executive Alignment
January 2025 – August 2026
- Served as product architect for LTK's new Brand Platform, translating direct customer research into an end-to-end architecture spanning casting, campaigns, reporting, messaging, payments, agency and creator workflows, integrations, and automated attribution.
- Co-designed and operationalized a six-stage, AI-enabled product development system with shared cross-functional ownership, measurable gates, and agent-ready context across Jira, GitHub, Figma, Cursor, and coding agents.
- Helped establish Product and Engineering operating mechanisms that improved discovery, decision quality, development readiness, QA, and post-launch learning.
- Advanced performance-based pricing and packaging with the Chief Revenue Officer, aligning commercial models with affiliate customer expectations while shaping payments and invoicing strategy.
- Operated at the intersection of product strategy, technical architecture, AI-enabled workflows, analytics, commercial strategy, and executive decision-making.
November 2019 – January 2026
- Educated product practitioners through peer-led learning, professional development, workshops, and networking programs.
- Led the volunteer organization through its transition to virtual programming.
- Redesigned the operating model so multiple directors could lead independently and asynchronously.
January 2022 – January 2025
- Quarterbacked a 2023 creator-marketplace pivot, reusing established campaign, offer, messaging, and collaboration workflows while adding only the proposal state and discovery surfaces needed to test creator-initiated demand.
- Personally led product integrations spanning Shopify, Stripe, Meta, TikTok, CreatorIQ, and YouTube.
- Served as data product designer for Match.AI, defining vectors and collaborative filtering to improve creator-brand fit and ROAS potential, then validating the model with managed-service teams before productization.
- Managed and developed product leaders, helping them expand scope and supporting multiple promotions.
- Partnered across Product, Engineering, Design, Data, Commercial, and executive stakeholders to translate strategic priorities into measurable product outcomes.
January 2020 – December 2021
- Launched LTK's self-service advertising platform, translating agency-led creator campaigns into scalable software workflows that enabled brands to work directly with creators.
- Built brand reporting and partner-data integrations to enrich creator and performance analytics.
- Introduced earned-media measurement capabilities for paid campaigns, strengthening performance visibility and decision-making.
September 2017 – January 2020
- Launched and scaled Hyperlink, the commerce-linking platform adopted by 250K+ creators and responsible for $30B+ in lifetime attributed sales.
- Owned a large-scale tracking and attribution platform and creator analytics product.
- Guided two engineering teams while translating data, analytics, attribution, and business requirements into scalable product capabilities.
October 2015 – September 2017
- Progressed through revenue integrity, analytics, and product ownership responsibilities across data, revenue engineering, payments, and attribution.
- Prioritized revenue-engineering initiatives, validated payments and attribution logic, forecasted business impact, and partnered with Finance and affiliate networks to protect creator earnings.
- Programming and analytics: Python, R, SQL, statistical inference, regression, exploratory data analysis, data cleaning, machine learning.
- Product and development: Jira, GitHub, Figma, Cursor, agent-enabled SDLC, product discovery, product analytics, product operations.
- Platforms and integrations: Shopify, Stripe, Meta, TikTok, CreatorIQ, YouTube.
- Data and AI: Data products, machine learning, attribution, analytics, AI product development, AI transformation.
University of Oklahoma · Bachelor of Business Administration, 2013
Majors: Finance, Economics, Energy Management · Minors: Philosophy, Accounting
- DeepLearning.AI — Generative AI for Software Development, 2026
- DeepLearning.AI — Agentic AI Course Certificate, 2026
- HubSpot Academy — AEO Fundamentals Certification, 2026
- Johns Hopkins University / Coursera — Data Science Specialization
- Mind the Product — Fundamentals & Essentials
- Exponential PM — Product Systems & Probe Analysis
Public resume updated August 2026. Phone number and formatted application resume are available directly to recruiters.