Founding Product Leader, AI Developer Tools

Hyperdev; Cape Town; Hybrid; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,900,000; Full time

Job summary

HyperDev is seeking a Founding Product Lead to shape an AI-powered developer platform. You will own product strategy, customer discovery, and the roadmap, working with founders, engineering, and design to turn vision into usable software.

You’ll run interviews with developers, map workflows, prototype ideas, and ship features while balancing technical constraints and business goals. The role combines hands-on product work with strategic direction in an early-stage setting.

Qualifications

• Experience taking a software product from idea through launch and iteration.
• Handson experience with customer discovery, prioritisation, and close collaboration with engineering and design.
• Strong technical fluency: you can discuss APIs, integrations, architecture, and engineering tradeoffs with developers.
• Practical experience building or shipping AI-powered products, with an understanding of LLMs.
• Strong product judgment and attention to user experience, supported by evidence and an ability to explain your decisions.
• Comfort using product data and customer feedback to guide experiments and investment.
• The ability to move work forward independently in an early-stage environment with evolving priorities.

Responsibilities

• Define where AI should act independently and where people should review or intervene.
• Partner with engineering to evaluate AI-powered workflows for usefulness, reliability, speed, and cost.
• Make transparency and recovery from mistakes part of the core product experience.
• Treat trust, security, and code ownership as product requirements from the outset.
• Define success measures across activation, engagement, retention, and conversion.

Skills

Product discovery

Customer interviews

AI product experience

Product strategy

Engineering collaboration

UX judgment

Decision making

Independence in early-stage

Tools

TypeScript

React

Python

LLM APIs

RAG

Agent workflows

Job description

HyperDev is seeking a Founding Product Lead to shape an AI-powered developer platform. You will own product strategy, customer discovery, and the roadmap, working with founders, engineering, and design to turn vision into usable software.

You’ll run interviews with developers, map workflows, prototype ideas, and ship features while balancing technical constraints and business goals. The role combines hands-on product work with strategic direction in an early-stage setting.