Research Product Manager

_ The mission of Thinking Machines is to build AI that extends human will and judgment. _

About the Role

As a Research Product Manager (RPM) at Thinking Machines Lab, you’ll play a central role in driving complex, high-impact technical products and programs that span research, infrastructure, and applied. You’ll help turn ambitious ideas into reality by driving cross-functional efforts, maintaining momentum across projects, and creating clarity in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.

Your work will connect people, ideas, and systems to ensure that our most important research initiatives stay aligned, well-scoped, and moving forward efficiently. It’s for someone who thrives in deeply technical discussions, understands the rhythm of research, can abstract at high-level and get into the weeds, with the ultimate goal of helping the company execute at scale.

What You’ll Do

• Drive and coordinate large-scale research products and programs , ensuring that complex projects are executed efficiently, transparently, and with scientific excellence.

• Translate technical ideas into actionable, well-scoped plans , defining milestones and keeping teams aligned across model development, data campaigns, infrastructure, and product integration.

• Collaborate across disciplines — from research and ML infrastructure to legal and business development — ramping up quickly on new domains as needed.

• Create and maintain compute and resource roadmaps , identifying bottlenecks, trade-offs, and opportunities to accelerate progress.

• Synthesize and communicate progress across diverse technical teams, ensuring the right people are looped in at the right time and that information flows smoothly across the organization.

• Support the integration of new technologies and research insights into production systems and product roadmaps, bridging the gap between frontier research and real-world applications.

Skills and Qualifications

Minimum qualifications:

• Degree in computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, physics, engineering, or similar

• Experience in research program management, product management, or similar

Preferred qualifications — we encourage you to apply if you meet some but not all of these:

• Masters or PhD in computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, physics, engineering, or similar

• Past experience at a frontier or academic research lab, contributing to research in artificial intelligence

• Past publications relevant to artificial intelligence or frontier models, with contributions to areas like evals, multimodality, human-ai interaction, post-training, pre-training, data, or other similar domains needed to conduct frontier AI research

• Ability to learn new technical domains

• Strong technical communication, written and verbal

Logistics

• Location: This role is based in San Francisco, California.

• Compensation: Depending on background, skills and experience, the expected annual salary range for this position is $175,000 - $475,000 USD.

• Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas. While we can’t guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you’re the right fit, we’re committed to working through the visa process together.

• Benefits: Thinking Machines offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, unlimited PTO, paid parental leave, and relocation support as needed.