FriendliAI is an AI inference platform that optimizes and manages LLM production, accelerating inference, reducing infrastructure footprint, supporting 430,000+ Hugging Face models and API access to EXAONE 4.0.
ABOUT THE JOB FriendliAI is seeking a Senior Product Manager to drive the strategy and execution of our AI inference platform. This is an individual contributor role with significant product leadership responsibility, including guiding junior Product Managers and Product Designers across shared product areas. You will own key product initiatives end-to-end while helping raise the overall bar for product thinking, execution, and decision-making within the product organization. This role sits at the intersection of customer needs, engineering reality, and business strategy, and plays a critical role in how FriendliAI’s platform evolves as we scale. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES - Own product strategy and roadmap for core areas of FriendliAI’s inference platform, including model APIs, deployment workflows, and developer-facing features. - Lead product initiatives end-to-end, from discovery and prioritization through delivery and iteration. - Guide and mentor junior Product Managers and Product Designers by setting direction, reviewing work, and providing structured feedback. - Drive customer discovery through interviews, design partnerships, usage data analysis, and direct engagement with enterprise and developer users. - Identify high-impact opportunities by analyzing market trends, competitive landscape, and emerging patterns in AI inference and infrastructure. - Translate customer and business needs into clear product requirements, user stories, and success metrics. - Partner closely with engineering and research teams to scope solutions, make tradeoffs, and deliver high-quality outcomes. - Collaborate with GTM, Sales, and Solutions teams to support customer conversations, roadmap alignment, and product positioning. - Define and track product success metrics and KPIs, using data and feedback to guide prioritization and iteration. - Clearly communicate product vision, priorities, and tradeoffs to stakeholders across the company. QUALIFICATIONS - 6+ years of product management experience, with demonstrated ownership of complex products or platforms. - Experience acting as a product lead on initiatives involving multiple PMs and/or Designers, even in an IC role. - Strong technical fluency and the ability to work closely with senior engineers on infrastructure-heavy systems. - Familiarity with AI/ML systems, particularly inference, deployment, or production AI workflows. - Proven ability to drive product direction in ambiguous, fast-moving environments. - Excellent written and verbal communication skills. - Strong judgment and structured decision-making skills. PREFERRED EXPERIENCE - Experience with AI inference platforms, LLM deployment, or GPU-based infrastructure. - Experience building developer platforms, APIs, or internal frameworks. - Exposure to multi-tenant SaaS or cloud-native architectures. - Experience in a high-growth startup or scale-up environment. - Background in computer science, engineering, or a closely related field. BENEFITS - Flexible working hours - Daily lunch and dinner provided; unlimited snacks and beverages - Supportive and highly collaborative work environment - Health check-up support and top-tier equipment/hardware support - A front-row seat to the generative AI infrastructure revolution - Competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and other benefits. ABOUT FRIENDLIAI FriendliAI is building the world’s best AI inference platform that makes large language and multi-modal models fast, efficient, and deployable at scale. We power high-throughput, low-latency AI workloads for organizations worldwide and integrate directly with Hugging Face, giving developers instant access to over 500,000 open-source models. We are a small, fast-moving team doing work that matters at one of the most exciting moments in the history of technology. With our world-class inference engine, we are building a platform that the AI industry can actually rely on.