Senior Staff Product Manager, AI

Who We Are   Temporal is an open source programming model that can simplify code, make applications more reliable, and help developers focus on the important things like delivering features faster. Our amazing user community provides us with real-time feedback and contributions to improve the developer experience everywhere.   Backed by top VC firms, we have built a team of professionals from various successful start-ups and well-known technology companies. Together, we collaborate cross-functionally, engage with and support our users to improve the developer experience, deliver world-class open-source software, and enhance our commercial SaaS platform.   Temporal is growing and working towards building the best community. We are looking for those who share our values, challenge 'standard' thinking, and want to influence our future. If you have a passion for helping developer communities, open-source software, and want to be a part of our amazing team, we'd love to hear from you!

Summary

Temporal already sits at the core of many AI workloads. As the Senior Staff Product Manager, AI, you will be responsible for the product strategy and execution for Temporal in the AI space. This role requires deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and a strong understanding of AI and distributed systems to identify and address the needs of AI-focused customers. You will work cross-functionally with engineering, design, marketing, field teams, and customer success teams to deliver features and capabilities that empower AI customers to thrive on the Temporal platform.

Responsibilities

Shape the AI Vertical Strategy:

• Develop and own the roadmap for the AI space, aligning it with company goals and customer priorities.
• Drive go-to-market strategies and support marketing and sales efforts to target AI-specific use cases.

Identify Platform Gaps and Market Opportunities:

• Discover and address gaps in the Temporal platform relevant to AI customers.
• Sequence features and map them to different market segments, prioritizing based on value and cost of implementation.
• Conduct competitive analyses to ensure Temporal’s offerings are best-in-class for AI customer needs.
• Identify areas for partnership and develop partnerships strategy.

Drive Execution in AI-Focused Distributed Systems:

• Provide durable execution strategies to solve distributed systems challenges for AI customers, leveraging Temporal’s core strengths.
• Partner with engineering teams to address scalability, reliability, and latency issues specific to AI use cases.

Empower AI Customers to Build Agentic Apps on Temporal:

• Identify and develop the features needed to enable AI customers to write and deploy intelligent agents on Temporal.
• Work closely with customers to understand their specific challenges and design solutions that meet their needs.

Requirements

Product Leadership in Greenfield Initiatives:

• Thrive in building products from scratch and navigating undefined spaces with ambiguity.
• Demonstrated success in defining and executing strategies for new verticals or markets.

Technical Expertise in Distributed Systems:

• Deep understanding of distributed systems, workflow orchestration, and the challenges involved in scaling complex systems.
• Experience working with Temporal or similar orchestration frameworks is a strong plus.

AI Industry Expertise:

• In-depth knowledge of the AI landscape, particularly around Large Language Models (LLMs), intelligent agents, and associated tools.
• Familiarity with the unique challenges and needs of AI-driven organizations.
• Familiarity with agentic apps and frameworks.

Hands on Experience with SDK Design:

• Ability to engage deeply with customers to uncover pain points, identify opportunities, and deliver impactful SDK constructs and idioms.
• Proficient in at least one programming language and familiar with multiple.

Cross-Functional Collaboration:

• Strong ability to work collaboratively across engineering, design, marketing, and other teams.
• Excellent communication skills to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Strategic Thinking and Prioritization:

• Demonstrated success in balancing long-term strategic goals with short-term execution priorities.
• Analytical mindset to evaluate trade-offs and make data-driven decisions.

Compensation<