Senior Manager/Director, Product - Developer Platform

About this role

We are building AI to simulate the world through merging art and science.

We believe that world models are at the frontier of progress in artificial intelligence. Language models alone won’t solve the world’s hardest problems – robotics, disease, scientific discovery. Real progress requires models that experience the world and learn from their mistakes, the same way that humans do. And this kind of trial and error can be massively accelerated when done in simulation, rather than in the real world.

World models offer the most clear path to general-purpose simulation, changing how stories are told, how scientific progress is made and how the next frontiers of humanity are reached.

Our team consists of creative, open minded, caring and ambitious people who are determined to change the world. We aspire to continuously build impossible things and our ability to do so relies on building an incredible team. If you are driven to do the same, we'd love to hear from you.

*Titles posted to our careers page are updated regularly to best advertise the role and expected seniority, but internally we have a flat titling system with two types of titles: one for individual contributors and one for people managers.

ABOUT THE ROLE

*Preferable to have someone near an office in NYC or San Francisco, but open to hiring anywhere in the US.

Runway's Developer Platform (RunwayDev) is the best place for developers to build with AI media models, with customers ranging from the world’s software companies, to enterprises and agencies, to vibe-coders. RunwayDev provides a single gateway to integrate with the best image, video, audio, and real-time models. Our vision is to be the developer platform behind all creative work: one place to call the best model for any creative task, with the best quality output.

RunwayDev serves not only Runway’s first-party frontier models (Gen-4.5, Aleph, Act-Two), but also provides day-zero access to a curated set of best-in-class third-party models, and intelligent routing that no aggregator can match.

We're hiring a Product Leader to own the Developer Platform business end-to-end. You'll own the API revenue number, create the platform strategy, prioritize the portfolio of bets, and serve as the single front door for this business across the company. You'll start deeply hands-on as the primary PM, and grow a strong team as the business scales.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Own the developer platform business. Drive the revenue goals for the developer platform (API ARR), along with the full funnel of developer signups, activation (first task), weekly active developer accounts, and developer NPS.

• Create and drive the strategy. Articulate and drive the portfolio of bets that make Runway the platform of choice for developers integrating media models. Co-develop strategy with leadership and partners, then make clear, ambitious calls on where to invest and what to cut.

• Win professional developers. Land and grow agencies, software tools, and platform partners. Partner with our internal deployment teams to ensure developers are successful with the platform.

• Ship, hands-on. Talk to developers every week, ship your own PRs and reference integrations, and partner tightly with engineering, design, DevRel, PMM, and partnerships. You'll be in the details daily and shipping regularly.

• Build the team. Start as the primary IC DRI and hire PMs underneath you as the business grows, raising the bar on outcome orientation as you scale.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• 7+ years in product management, preferably leading a developer-facing or platform/API product at meaningful scale. A track record of moving revenue and adoption metrics, not just shipping features.

• You thrive in an environment with rapid pace and a high accountability culture. You move very fast, make decisions with incomplete information, and instinctively gravitate towards shipping today, not writing docs for tomorrow.

• A GM mindset. You think in terms of the business, not just the roadmap. You're fluent in the economics of a usage-based / consumption API business, comfortable owning a P&L-style number, and you instinctively tie every bet to a hypothesis about how it moves the business.

• Deep developer-product craft. Hands-on experience with API and SDK design, developer onboarding and activation, docs and DevRel, and usage-based pricing and packaging. You know what a great developer experience feels like and you've personally driven the loop.

• Strong technical fluency and customer obsession. You can earn the trust of a discerning developer audience — talk credibly about latency, cost, reliability, and integration ergonomics. Experience with inference platforms, infrastructure, or AI media products is a plus.

• Excellent written and verbal communication. You can make a sharp, written argument and tell a compelling launch story. You confidently assess the state of the business, call out challenges and articulate your plans to solve them

Runway strives to recruit and retain exceptional talent from diverse backgrounds while ensuring pay equity for our team. Our salary ranges are based on competitive market rates for our size, stage and industry, and salary is just one part of the overall compensation package we provide.

There are many factors that go into salary determinations, including relevant experience, skill level and qualifications assessed during the interview process, and maintaining internal equity with peers on the team. The range shared below is a general expectation for the function as posted, but we are also open to considering candidates who may be more or less experienced than outlined in the job description. In this case, we will communicate any updates in the expected salary range.

Lastly, the provided range is the expected salary for candidates in the U.S. Outside of those regions, there may be a change in the range, which again, will be communicated to candidates.

WORKING AT RUNWAY

Great things come from great teams. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwmj4ato2kw&ab_channel=Runway We’d love to hear from you.

We’re committed to creating a space where our employees can bring their full selves to work and have equal opportunity to succeed. So regardless of race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, origin, ability, age, veteran status, if joining this mission speaks to you, we encourage you to apply.

More about Runway

• Universal World Simulator https://runwayml.com/world-simulator.html

• GWM-1 https://runwayml.com/research/introducing-runway-gwm-1

• Gen-4.5 https://runwayml.com/research/introducing-runway-gen-4.5

• General World Models https://runwayml.com/research/introducing-general-world-models

• Robotics SDK https://runwayml.com/research/introducing-runway-gwm-1#robotics-section

• Conversational Real-time Agents https://runwayml.com/research/introducing-runway-gwm-1#avatars-section

• Runway Studios https://runwayml.com/studios

We're excited to be recognized as a best place to work:

Crain's https://www.crainsnewyork.com/awards/best-places-work-2023 | InHerSight https://www.inhersight.com/companies/best/city/new-york-city-ny | BuiltIn NYC https://builtin.com/awards/new-york-city/2024/best-places-to-work | INC https://www.inc.com/best-workplaces/2024