Senior Product Manager, Asta

Job description

##### Persons in these roles are expected to work from our offices in Seattle. On-site requirements vary based on position and team. If you have questions about on-site work arrangements for this role, please ask your recruiter. ##### Our **base** salary range is $115,920 - $173,880, and in addition we have generous bonus plans to provide a competitive compensation package. **Who You Are:** You think like a builder and an advocate at the same time. You can sit with a researcher who's pursuing a novel method and hasn't yet found the words to describe what they need, and translate that into engineering requirements that an engineering team can actually build against. You're comfortable operating at the intersection of infrastructure and science: you don't need to be an ML researcher, but you're genuinely curious about how researchers work, what agentic frameworks make possible, and where the current tooling gets in their way. You know how to turn a fuzzy, ambitious mission into a tactical roadmap with sequenced milestones and clear ownership. You hold a high bar for the experiences and tools already in the hands of our users, because internal researchers and the broader community depend on them being fast, reliable, and compliant, even while you're pushing the frontier of what's next. **Who We Are:** At Ai2, our mission is to develop breakthrough AI that solves the world's biggest problems. We believe the insight needed to get there lives at the intersection of deep scientific AI understanding and the application of AI in common-good domains. This role sits on our Strategic Programs team, which also includes Product Management, Design, and Communications. As a team, we help shape Ai2's strategic vision and accelerate execution of its goals. We are a highly collaborative team with a high bar for excellence, who aren't afraid to question how things have been done in the past to propose changes that drive the organization forward. It's a very exciting time to be part of this team as Ai2 plays a unique role in shaping how AI changes the world. **Your Next Challenge:** You will own the engineering and data frameworks of Asta, Ai2's platform for building agents that advance scientific research. Your users are the researchers and engineers who build on Asta; Ai2's own research teams and the broader AI-for-science community. Your primary partner will be the Agentic Frameworks and Data engineering team. You'll be one of the first product minds shaping what an agentic platform for science actually looks like. There's no existing playbook to inherit, so you have the opportunity to define engineering requirements grounded in real researcher workflows, build the roadmap for Asta's agentic framework and its supporting tools, and run the feedback loop that keeps engineering and research in continuous conversation. You'll also own the Semantic Scholar data platform end to end; a knowledge graph of 100M+ papers, and the public APIs that power Asta and science agents. You’ll keep these resources reliable for the millions who depend on it and continue building them into the highest-quality open literature resource in the field. In This Role, You Will: - Define Asta engineering requirements by working directly with Ai2 researchers to understand their workflows, translating what you learn into clear, prioritized specifications for the Agentic Frameworks engineering team. - Help articulate trade offs to help guide the team towards the highest impact priorities and investments. - Build and sequence the roadmap for Asta's agentic framework and its supporting tools, so that new tools and capabilities compound toward unlocking real scientific advancements. - Create and run a continuous feedback loop between engineering and research, so that researchers’ needs surface early and shape the roadmap, and so that new capabilities get back in front of researchers quickly. - Drive adoption of Asta's tools among Ai2's own researchers, so that our internal science runs on the platform we ship to the world. - Project manage and drive execution across Asta engineering workstreams: track progress against the roadmap, unblock dependencies, and keep engineering and research aligned on priorities and tradeoffs. - Own the Semantic Scholar platform end to end: data platform and public APIs. Balancing reliability for millions of users with the roadmap to rebuild the platform. - Own Ai2's benchmarking strategy for scientific agents: set the direction for AstaBench, our public benchmark suite, and define which evaluations Ai2 standardizes on internally, with partners, and for the broader AI research community - Own regulatory and governance compliance for these products, including data subject rights such as right to access and right to be forgotten, partnering with legal as needed. - Represent the researcher and developer perspective in engineering planning, and represent engineering constraints and tradeoffs back to research and leadership. - Contribute to how Ai2 does product management as a discipline, given this is a growing function within the Strategic Programs team. **What You'll Need:** - Bachelor's degree and 5-8+ years of product management experience, including shipping developer-facing or research-facing products such as APIs, platforms, or tools built for technical users. - Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous, research-driven needs into concrete engineering requirements and a sequenced roadmap. - Experience partnering closely with an engineering team on a technical platform, including day-to-day prioritization and execution, not just quarterly planning. - Genuine interest in AI research, agentic systems, and their application to scientific discovery, with the ability to learn a technical domain quickly. - Comfort owning compliance-related product requirements (e.g., data access, deletion, and privacy regulations) and translating them into engineering work. - Strong written communication — you can write a requirements doc, a roadmap update, and a risk escalation that people actually read and act on. - Excellent stakeholder management across research and engineering, including with senior leaders, and comfort navigating disagreement to a decision. - Comfort operating with ambiguity and building product processes where none exist yet, while knowing which processes are worth the overhead. Nice To Have: - Direct experience with agent frameworks, LLM tooling, or orchestration platforms (e.g., agent harnesses, evaluation frameworks). - Experience building or maintaining public-facing developer products, such as APIs or benchmarks used by an external research community. - Familiarity with data privacy and governance regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA) and what they require of a product. - Experience in a research organization, national lab, or academic environment, where timelines and incentives differ from a typical product company. **Physical Demands and Work Environment:** The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by a team member to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions. - Must be able to remain in a stationary position for long periods of time. - The ability to communicate information and ideas so others will understand. Must be able to exchange accurate information in these situations. - The ability to observe details at close range. - Can work under deadlines. **A Little More About Ai2:** Ai2 is a Seattle based non-profit AI research institute founded in 2014 by the late Paul Allen. Our mission is building breakthrough AI to solve the world’s biggest problems. We develop foundational AI research and innovation to deliver real-world impact through large-scale open models, data, robotics, conservation, and beyond. In addition to Ai2’s core mission, we also aim to contribute to humanity through our treatment of each member of the Ai2 Team. Some highlights are: - **We are a learning organization** – because everything Ai2 does is ground-breaking, we are learning every day. Similarly, through weekly Ai2 Academy lectures, a wide variety of world-class AI experts as guest speakers, and our commitment to your personal on-going education, Ai2 is a place where you will have opportunities to continue learning alongside your coworkers. - **We value diversity -** We seek to hire, support, and promote people from all genders, ethnicities, and all levels of experience regardless of age. We particularly encourage applications from women, non-binary individuals, people of color, members of the LGBTQA+ community, and people with disabilities of any kind. - **We value inclusion -** We understand the value that people's individual experiences and perspectives can bring to an organization, and we are building a culture in which all voices are heard, respected and considered. - **We emphasize a healthy work/life balance** – we believe our team members are happiest and most productive when their work/life balance is optimized. While we value powerful research results which drive our mission forward, we also value dinner with family, weekend time, and vacation time. We offer generous paid vacation and sick leave as well as family leave. - **We are collaborative and transparent** – we consider ourselves a team, all moving with a common purpose. We are quick to cheer our successes, and even quicker to share and jointly problem solve our failures. - **We are in Seattle** – and our office is on the water! We have mountains, we have lakes, we have four seasons, we bike to work, we have a vibrant theater scene, and we have so much else. We even have kayaks for you to paddle right outside our front door. We welcome interest from applicants from outside of the United States. - **We are friendly**– chances are you will like every one of the 200+ (and growing) people who work here. We do. Ai2 is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. You may view the related [Know Your Rights](https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-10/EEOC_KnowYourRights_screen_reader_10_20.pdf) compliance poster and the [Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision](https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ofccp/pdf/pay-transp_%20English_formattedESQA508c.pdf) by clicking on their corresponding links. This employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. If E-Verify cannot confirm that you are authorized to work, this employer is required to give you written instructions and an opportunity to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so you can begin to resolve the issue before the employer can take any action against you, including terminating your employment. Employers can only use E-Verify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the Form I-9. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants with disabilities to the full extent required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you feel you need a reasonable accommodation pursuant to the ADA, you are encouraged to contact us at [recruiting@allenai.org.](mailto:recruiting@allenai.org) **Benefits:** - Team members and their families are covered by medical, dental, vision, and an employee assistance program. - Team members are able to enroll in our health savings account plan, our healthcare reimbursement arrangement plan, and our health care and dependent care flexible spending account plans. - Team members are able to enroll in our company’s 401k plan. - Team members will receive $125 per month to assist with commuting or internet expenses and will also receive $200 per month for fitness and wellbeing expenses. - Team members will also receive up to ten sick days per year, up to seven personal days per year, up to 20 vacation days per year and twelve paid holidays throughout the calendar year. - Team members will be able to receive annual bonuses and can participate in the long-term incentive plan. Note: This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the team members(s) of this position. Team members will be required to follow any other job-related instructions and to perform any other job-related duties requested by any person authorized to give instructions or assignments. All duties and responsibilities are essential functions and requirements and are subject to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities. To perform this job successfully, the team member(s) will possess the skills, aptitudes, and abilities to perform each duty proficiently. Some requirements may exclude individuals who pose a direct threat or significant risk to the health or safety of themselves or others. The requirements listed in this document are the minimum levels of knowledge, skills, or abilities. This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise, other than an at will relationship.