Product Manager, Developer Experience and Open Source

Role

As the Product Manager, Developer Experience and Open Source Strategy, you will be responsible for defining and executing our holistic vision for engaging the developer and open source robotics community. This is a highly strategic role with a broad portfolio. You will own our core open source experience—a platform based on ROS and tightly integrated with Flowstate, as well as the entire data and SDK layer that enables our platform offering and experiences.

Your central mission is to build a vibrant ecosystem that serves as a powerful funnel for our commercial offerings. You will own the open source product offering, map out the complete developer journey from community discovery to paid customer, and define the product-led strategy for conversion. This role is deeply cross-functional, requiring you to own the product relationship and the specific roadmap of key internal engineering teams, including the SDK, Data and Architecture Evolution team, to ensure our platform is robust, scalable, and meets the needs of both open source and commercial developers. 

In addition, you will manage Intrinsic's efforts and strategic contributions back to foundational community projects, including ROS, Gazebo, and OpenRMF.

How your work moves the mission forward

• Define and articulate a clear, unified open source product strategy for our portfolio, from our core platform to our community contributions.
• Own the product offering for our core open source platform, determining which features are included and how they provide value to developers.
• Define the developer persona and map the complete developer journey, from initial discovery of our open source tools to successful onboarding and conversion to our paid platform.
• Define and drive the platform APIs and SDK strategy, enabling both open source and commercial developers to integrate with the Intrinsic platform.
• Define and advocate for best practices in API design, documentation (API references, guides, tutorials), SDKs, sandboxes, and developer support processes. 
• Develop and test product-led growth initiatives and monetization strategies to create a seamless and compelling path from community adoption to commercial success.
• Ensure tight product integration and a cohesive user experience between our open source offering and the commercial Flowstate platform, particularly in regards to commonality of the SDK and data representation / data management.
• Act as the primary product liaison for the SDK and Data/Architecture teams, translating needs from multiple sources (platform, solutions, community) into a prioritized technical roadmap.
• Champion the open source developer experience, working with design, documentation, and community teams to build a vibrant, engaged ecosystem.
• Spearhead community engagements around our open source product, including building developer funnels and driving industrial consortiums to drive standardization and adoption.
• Direct Intrinsic's strategic contributions to key open source projects (including ROS, Gazebo, and OpenRMF), ensuring they align with our platform goals and strengthen the broader robotics ecosystem.

Skills you will need to be successful

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field or equivalent industry experience.
• Proven track record of success as a product manager, ideally on a technical platform or developer-focused product.
• Demonstrable experience managing open source products, including engaging with developer communities and managing public roadmaps.
• Proven experience defining and driving API design principles (e.g., REST, gRPC) and versioning strategies.
• Developer Experience (DX): Expertise in crafting highly usable, well-documented, and performant SDKs (e.g., in Python, Java, Go, TypeScript) that minimize friction and time-to-first-use (TTFU).
• Strong strategic and analytical skills, with experience in defining customer journeys and product-led growth funnels.
• Ability to dive into complex technical concepts and collaborate effectively with SDK and platform architecture engineers.
• Outstanding communication skills, both at the executive level and with peers.
• Integrity that fosters a culture of trust across product, business, and engineering.
• Ability to dive into and breakdown complex problems without precedence to lean on.

Skills that will differentiate your candidacy

• M.B.A. and/or M.S. in Engineering or Computer Science.
• Deep understanding of open source licensing strategies and their business implications (e.g., GPL, AGPL, Apache, MIT).
• Proven experience with open source monetization and conversion models (e.g., open-core, freemium, paid support/services like Red Hat, dual-licensing, etc).
• Experience in robotics solution development with ROS (Robot Operating System), or others.
• Experience as a software engineer or product manager for SDKs, APIs, or developer tools.
• Exceptionally organized and self-driven, with a strong sense of ownership on all projects.