Senior Director, Product Management - Platform
Lambda · San Francisco, United States · 2mo ago
Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda's mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU.
If you'd like to build the world's best AI cloud, join us.
*Note: This position requires presence in our Bellevue or San Francisco office location 4 days per week; Lambda's designated work from home day is currently Tuesday.
About the Role
Every product Lambda ships depends on horizontal capabilities: the security and identity surfaces that let enterprise customers trust us, the telemetry and observability that tells us and our customers what the fleet is doing, and the metering and billing that turns per-minute GPU usage and committed cluster contracts into accurate invoices. When the platform layer is coherent, every Lambda product gets stronger at once. That is the leverage of this role.
You'll lead Lambda's Platform product group as a player-coach. You'll hire and manage three product managers, one each for Security, Observability, and Billing, all opening now. While you build that team, you'll personally own platform product strategy: the roadmap, the priorities, and the tradeoffs. You'll partner directly with platform engineering leadership. This is a first-line product management manager role, and you'll set the bar your team is measured against.
Great product managers at Lambda are defined by three things: insight, influence, and execution. Insight means you look at the data, determine what it means for customers and business, and then figure out what to do about it. But, a great idea doesn’t mean anything in a vacuum. That is where influence comes in. Influence means you take that idea and get others to want to buy into it; you win over engineers, designers, executives, and partners without relying on authority. But a great idea that everyone is excited about doesn’t matter unless it is delivered to customers. Execution means you work with the right people to get the idea launched, then measure and iterate. We hire product managers who learn new domains fast and reason rigorously from evidence. Deep domain depth in cloud platforms makes you stronger, but insight, influence, and execution are the bar.
Success in this role looks like two things: a platform layer that enterprise customers can trust, and a hired, high-performing product management team that clears the bar you set. If you love building the connective tissue of a cloud, and you want to grow product managers while still doing the work yourself, we'd love to hear from you.
We value diverse backgrounds, experiences, and skills, and we are excited to hear from candidates who can bring unique perspectives to our team. If you do not exactly meet this description but believe you may be a good fit, please still apply and help us understand your readiness for this role.
What You'll Do
Build the Team: Hire, manage, and develop the Security, Observability, and Billing product managers, and set the standard for insight, influence, and execution across the Platform product group.
Own the Roadmap: Define and own the platform roadmap end to end across security, observability, and billing, and hold it accountable to customer and business outcomes.
Carry the Strategy Yourself: Personally own platform product strategy while the team is being hired, so the roadmap never waits on headcount.
Strengthen Every Product: Deliver horizontal capabilities that On-Demand GPU Instances, 1-Click Clusters, and the Lambda Cloud API all depend on, rather than one-off features for a single product line.
Get Metering and Billing Right: Own the product surface for usage-based GPU compute billing, from per-minute on-demand billing to committed multi-node cluster contracts, so every invoice is accurate and explainable.
Earn Enterprise Trust: Shape the identity and security surfaces that let enterprise ML (machine learning) teams adopt Lambda with confidence.
Partner with Platform Engineering: Work side by side with platform engineering leadership on sequencing, tradeoffs, and delivery, so strategy and architecture move together.
Decide with Data: Turn fleet telemetry, usage patterns, and customer signal into clear build decisions, and communicate the what, the so what, and the now what to executives and customers.
You
Have 10+ years of product management experience, including experience shipping platform or infrastructure products that other teams build on
Have 3+ years hiring and managing product managers, or have formally led product managers as a first-line manager
Turn ambiguous data and customer signal into a clear decision about what to build next, and can show where you've done it
Win engineers, designers, executives, and customers over to your ideas without relying on organizational authority
Work with the right people to get products launched, then measure and iterate rather than moving on
Are comfortable operating as a player-coach, owning strategy directly while building the team that will own it after you
Can go deep with engineering leadership on technical tradeoffs and hold your own in architecture discussions
Communicate in writing clearly enough that an executive can act on your document without a follow-up meeting
Able to define iterative plans that move an organization from the current state towards the desired outcome
Nice to Have
Have shipped metering, billing, or monetization systems for usage-based products
Have built identity, security, or compliance product surfaces for enterprise customers
Have built telemetry or observability products, or worked deeply with tools like Prometheus and Grafana
Have a background in GPU compute, high performance computing, or AI infrastructure
Have built a product team from zero, including writing the job descriptions and running the hiring loops
Salary Range Information
The annual salary range for this position has been set based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.
About Lambda
Founded in 2012, with 500+ employees, and growing fast
Our investors notably include TWG Global, US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Andra Capital, SGW, Andrej Karpathy, ARK Invest, Fincadia Advisors, G Squared, In-Q-Tel (IQT), KHK & Partners, NVIDIA, Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, Wiwynn, Gradient Ventures, Mercato Partners, SVB, 1517, and Crescent Cove
We have research papers accepted at top machine learning and graphics conferences, including NeurIPS, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, and TOG
Our values are publicly available: https://lambda.ai/careers
We offer generous cash & equity compensation
Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents
Wellness and commuter stipends for select roles
401k Plan with 2% company match (USA employees)
Flexible paid time off plan that we all actually use
Equal Opportunity Employer
Lambda is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.