Founding Developer Relations Lead

Job description

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. ABOUT THE ROLE *Open to hiring remote across North America + Europe — we also have offices in NYC, San Francisco, and Seattle We are hiring for our first Developer Relations lead. This role is for someone who lives at the intersection of code and creativity – deeply technical, genuinely plugged into the generative AI space, and excited to build the developer community around putting frontier media models to use. This is a high-ownership, high-visibility role with real influence over how developers experience Runway. You will own the end-to-end developer experience – driving awareness, activation, and long-term engagement among the creative technologists and engineers building on the Runway Dev platform. Success in this role requires a blend of technical depth, creative sensibility, and a genuine enthusiasm for where generative AI is going. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Produce Content That Gets Developers Building - Produce high-quality tutorials, demos, sample repos, and technical walkthroughs that showcase what's possible with media models - Own social and X content strategy for the developer audience – rapid demos, creative experiments, prompting tips, and technical threads - Run regular developer communications including email newsletters, changelogs, and recurring developer office hours - Prototype creative, targeted content that meets developers where they are - Build & Energize the Creative Developer Community - Lead hackathons, sponsorships, and developer events end-to-end – from concept and logistics to execution and follow-through - Build and nurture a community of creative technologists, researchers, and developers pushing the boundaries of generative video and image - Represent Runway at conferences, meetups, and online communities; be a recognizable and trusted presence in the generative AI developer ecosystem - Surface developer sentiment, emerging use cases, and market signals back to internal teams to inform product direction - Optimize the Developer Funnel. - Optimize the full developer funnel from awareness to activation; drive adoption and engagement across our Runway Dev user base with a structured, data-informed engagement strategy - Partner with product & design to create onboarding experiences that get developers from zero to their first successful API build in minutes - Identify high-potential developers through usage and spend signals and route them into the right engagement tracks - Track, analyze, and report on developer funnel metrics and API engagement using BI tools and data - Champion Developers Internally - Serve as the primary point of contact for the developer community; be genuinely accessible, responsive, and useful - Build a tight, structured feedback loop between developers and the Product and Engineering teams – surface trends, flag blockers, and advocate for developer needs - Partner with Marketing and GTM to create developer-focused activation campaigns that resonate with a technical, creative audience - Define and track success metrics tied to developer activation, API engagement, and community growth WHAT YOU’LL NEED - 5+ years in developer relations, developer advocacy, or a highly technical, community-facing role; ideally within AI/ML, creative tech, or a research-adjacent organization - Deep, hands-on familiarity with generative video and image models; you've built with them, you experiment constantly, and you follow this space closely - Comfort operating in a startup environment. You've built programs, communities, or developer motions from scratch and know how to create structure and momentum without a playbook to follow. - Strong engineering fundamentals: you can build demos independently, debug API integrations, and speak credibly with technical audiences - A genuine creative sensibility – you understand the needs of designers, filmmakers, and creative technologists, not just traditional software engineers, and you move fluidly between those worlds - Proven track record of driving developer community growth and API adoption with measurable outcomes - Experience producing developer-facing content across formats: documentation, video demos, short-form social, and live technical presentations - Deep enthusiasm for generative AI; you stay close to the technology, build with it, and have a strong point of view on where it's going 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