Product Manager, Developer Platform

Job description

We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era. When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done. Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma. We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it's core to how we work, and we're committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day-to-day. As part of our interview process, you'll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today. ROLE OVERVIEW We're looking for a product manager who thinks like a developer advocate and acts like a platform strategist. This role sits at the intersection of systems integration and developer experience and as AI transforms how scientists work, the stakes have never been higher. The world's most innovative life sciences teams are already building agentic R&D workflows on top of Benchling, and they need a platform that can keep up. Your job is to understand what they're building, identify the gaps before they become blockers, and make the case internally for what needs to get built next. You'll own the developer platform roadmap, serve as the internal voice of the external developer, and ensure that customer and partner learnings shape priorities across the Build org. This is a role for someone who is always six months ahead, anticipating what cutting-edge life sciences teams will need to build next, and making sure Benchling is ready when they get there. RESPONSIBILITIES - Own the end-to-end roadmap for Benchling's developer-facing products: REST APIs, MCPs, SDKs, API playground, code examples, and code recipes. - Our most sophisticated customers are building agentic R&D workflows on top of Benchling and need primitives that don't exist yet. You'll define what those primitives are, get them built, and make sure developers can actually use them. - Our partner ecosystem (Quilt, Calira, Code Ocean, Seqera, and others) needs extensibility that scales beyond one-off integrations. You'll work cross-functionally with Solutions Engineering, Partnerships, and Customer Success to build the platform foundation that makes this possible. - Developers who try to build on Benchling today hit walls fast — in our docs, our APIs, and our support. You'll own the developer experience end-to-end and close the gap between what developers expect and what we deliver. - We don't have a clear line of sight into how developers are actually using our platform. You'll establish the feedback loops through interviews, support signals, and usage data and make sure those learnings shape roadmap decisions across the Build org. QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED: - 3-5 years of product management experience, with hands-on ownership of API, SDK, or developer platform products - Technical fluency: you can read code, review API specs, and have credible conversations with engineers. You don't need to ship production code, but you need to deeply understand the systems you're building - Developer empathy at your core: you obsess over the developer experience and are constantly thinking about how AI-era tooling (MCPs, LLM-friendly APIs, agentic workflows) can supercharge what developers can do with Benchling - Familiarity with the modern developer stack — APIs, SDKs, documentation, and developer onboarding; you understand the tradeoffs and know what good looks like - Strong communicator: you write crisp requirements and can present clearly to engineers, stakeholders, and customers alike Nice to Have: - Familiarity with the life sciences or enterprise SaaS domain - Experience building developer communities, running beta programs, or managing developer relations programs - Prior experience at a company with a platform business model or marketplace HOW WE WORK We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday). #LI-Hybrid #BI-Hybrid #EN-1 Benchling welcomes everyone. We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences. We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.