Product Manager (Developer Platform)

Benchling; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible hybrid work arrangement

In-office collaboration

Job summary

Benchling is seeking a Product Manager in San Francisco to lead the roadmap for developer-facing products like APIs and SDKs. You will focus on enhancing the developer experience, ensuring that user feedback guides product decisions. Ideal candidates possess 3-5 years of product management experience, technical fluency, and a deep understanding of developer needs in the life sciences or enterprise SaaS domain. This position provides a flexible hybrid work arrangement, requiring in-office presence three days a week.

Qualifications

• 3-5 years of experience managing API, SDK, or developer platform products.
• Ability to read code and discuss technical specifications with engineers.
• An understanding of developer experience in the AI context.

Responsibilities

• Own the developer platform roadmap including APIs, SDKs, and other developer products.
• Define and deliver necessary primitives for developer needs.
• Collaborate with partner ecosystem for extensibility.
• Ensure quality developer experience with documentation and support.
• Establish feedback loops to guide product decisions.

Skills

Product management experience

Technical fluency

Developer empathy

Strong communication skills

Job description

Role Overview

We are 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.
• Define and deliver the primitives that our most sophisticated customers need – agents that build on Benchling on top of primitives that don’t exist yet.
• Enable extensibility for our partner ecosystem (such as Quilt, Calira, Code Ocean, Seqera, and others) by collaborating with Solutions Engineering, Partnerships, and Customer Success to build a scalable platform foundation.
• Own the end-to-end developer experience – close the gap between what developers expect and what we deliver in documentation, APIs, and support.
• Establish feedback loops through interviews, support signals, and usage data to shape roadmap decisions across the Build org.

Qualifications

• 3‑5 years of product management experience with hands‑on ownership of API, SDK, or developer platform products.
• Technical fluency: ability to read code, review API specs, and hold credible conversations with engineers.
• Developer empathy: obsess over the developer experience and envision how AI‑era tooling such as MCPs, LLM‑friendly APIs, and agentic workflows can supercharge developers.
• Familiarity with the modern developer stack – APIs, SDKs, documentation, and developer onboarding; knowledge of trade‑offs and best practices.
• Strong communication skills: write crisp requirements and present clearly to engineers, stakeholders, and customers.

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.

Benefits

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).

Equal Opportunity Statement

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. We do not 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.