Product Manager, Platform at Benchling in San Francisco, CA

Job description

• Application
• We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era.
• When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done.
• Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma.
• We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it's core to how we work, and we're committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day-to-day. As part of our interview process, you'll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today.
• AI is only as good as the data underneath it. Schemas is the configuration layer where customers model their scientific data and processes. It's the customer-defined data model that makes Benchling different from a point solution, and the contract every other system (internal apps, integrations, AI agents) relies on when reading or writing to Benchling. Get it right, and AI inherits a solid foundation; get it wrong, every layer above inherits the problem.
• As Schemas PM, you own the primitives (schema types, computed fields, fieldsets, constraints, static properties, data versioning) that every other team at Benchling builds on top of. This is one of the highest-leverage, most technically interesting roles on the platform team, and one we're investing in now as AI features across Benchling increasingly depend on the quality of the underlying data model.

Responsibilities

• Set product direction for Schemas and ship toward it incrementally, balancing fast prototyping with the platform stability admins and developers depend on.
• Relentlessly track how customers use Schemas — where it delights, where it fails — and build sharp personas and job-to-be-done context for each user type (admins, scientists, computational teams, internal and external developers).
• Bring customer "why," not just feature requests, back to Engineering and Design; partner with them closely to ship new capabilities.
• Champion structured, well-modeled data as the foundation for AI value across Benchling, anticipating what schema consumers will need next.
• Partner with Customer Experience, Field, Sales, and Marketing to get customer signal into the roadmap early.
• Partner closely with other Platform and Apps PMs — schemas underpin nearly every other platform surface, so alignment on sequencing and shared abstractions matters as much as your own roadmap.

Requirements

• Energized by platform work and systems thinking; comfortable building the right abstraction ahead of need.
• Has designed, owned, or significantly evolved a data-modeling, schema, or configuration system used by external developers or technical admins — not just consumed one as a feature.
• Becomes the go-to person for customers, field, and engineers — not a router to engineering.
• Deep, demonstrated discovery practice: has built personas and JTBD frameworks from scratch, not just used ones handed to them.
• Track record balancing long-term vision with incremental shipping.
• Strong communicator across technical and executive audiences; B2B SaaS or developer-platform background preferred.
• Genuine curiosity about the science behind the data. You don't need a science background, but you should want one by the end of your first quarter here.

Skills

Required

• Platform work and systems thinking

Benefits

• Full-time U.S. employees enjoy a comprehensive benefits program including equity, health, dental, vision, 401(k)+ employer match, wellness, commuter, and more.
• Benchling takes a market-based approach to pay. The candidate's starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and work location.