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Sr/Staff Product Manager, Research Products

RunwayBackend Development

Job Description

We are building AI to simulate the world through merging art and science.
We believe that world models are at the frontier of progress in artificial intelligence. Language models alone won’t solve the world’s hardest problems – robotics, disease, scientific discovery. Real progress requires models that experience the world and learn from their mistakes, the same way that humans do. And this kind of trial and error can be massively accelerated when done in simulation, rather than in the real world.
World models offer the most clear path to general-purpose simulation, changing how stories are told, how scientific progress is made and how the next frontiers of humanity are reached.

Our team consists of creative, open minded, caring and ambitious people who are determined to change the world. We aspire to continuously build impossible things and our ability to do so relies on building an incredible team. If you are driven to do the same, we'd love to hear from you.

*Open to hiring remote across the US — we also have offices in NYC, San Francisco, and Seattle

This is a rare PM role with true vertical ownership across the full product lifecycle, from early-stage research and pre-training through post-training, UX buildout, GTM strategy, and pricing. It gives the right person a GM-like mandate to drive product decisions end-to-end, in a way that’s unique for a company of our scale.

We’re looking for a Product Manager to build the AI tools our customers will rely on. You have a real engineering or quantitative foundation and a track record of shipping products. You can take the state-of-the-art systems our research team builds and turn them into products that creators love.

You’ll deeply understand what users want, what’s technically possible, and what’s strategic for our business. You’ll be the bridge between our users and our internal teams, so we ship our models and products with the most value for Runway’s creators.

This role is a fundamental and critical part of the team at a market-defining company in its early stages.

What you’ll do

  • Own the product strategy and roadmap for your area, from early model development through launch, pricing, and go-to-market
  • Partner with research to shape what gets built, translating customer needs and model capabilities into clear product requirements and priorities
  • Work closely with engineering and design to ship new products and continuously improve existing ones, making sound technical tradeoffs along the way
  • Define and analyze product metrics, run A/B tests, and use data (including your own SQL and Python analysis) to validate pain points and prioritize features
  • Talk with users weekly to uncover use cases and turn feedback into product decisions
  • Drive pricing and GTM strategy in partnership with business teams

What you’ll need

  • 4+ years of product management experience, including taking products from zero to one
  • A strong technical foundation, typically demonstrated by things like the following:
    • A degree in a technical or quantitative field such as computer science, HCI, math, statistics, or physics
    • Professional experience writing code before the LLM codegen era (e.g., as a software engineer, data scientist, data analyst, or technical founder who built and bootstrapped a product)
  • Hands-on fluency with SQL, Python, AI code generation tools, and version control best practices
  • Working knowledge of current ML capabilities and products, and the ability to discuss tradeoffs with researchers and engineers
  • Experience in fast-moving teams, with comfort operating amid ambiguity
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Nice to have

  • Experience with generative AI, creative tools, or media products
  • Experience owning pricing or GTM for a product

Runway strives to recruit and retain exceptional talent from diverse backgrounds while ensuring pay equity for our team. Our salary ranges are based on competitive market rates for our size, stage and industry, and salary is just one part of the overall compensation package we provide.

There are many factors that go into salary determinations, including relevant experience, skill level and qualifications assessed during the interview process, and maintaining internal equity with peers on the team. The range shared below is a general expectation for the function as posted, but we are also open to considering candidates who may be more or less experienced than outlined in the job description. In this case, we will communicate any updates in the expected salary range.

Lastly, the provided range is the expected salary for candidates in the U.S. Outside of those regions, there may be a change in the range, which again, will be communicated to candidates.

Working at Runway

Great things come from great teams. We’d love to hear from you.

We’re committed to creating a space where our employees can bring their full selves to work and have equal opportunity to succeed. So regardless of race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, origin, ability, age, veteran status, if joining this mission speaks to you, we encourage you to apply.

More about Runway

  • Universal World Simulator
  • GWM-1
  • Gen-4.5
  • General World Models
  • Robotics SDK
  • Conversational Real-time Agents
  • Runway Studios

We're excited to be recognized as a best place to work:

Crain's | InHerSight | BuiltIn NYC | INC

Next step

Ready to apply?

Runway · Worldwide · applications close Dec 6, 2026

Apply Now

How to apply

The Apply button opens Runway's own application page in a new browser tab — applying is free, and this board never sits between you and the employer: no middleman, no form of ours to fill first.

This posting runs on Ashby, the applicant tracking system behind Runway's job board — the form you'll see lives at jobs.ashbyhq.com. It asks for the basics first: your name, email, and a résumé/CV upload. After that come the custom questions this employer wrote for the role — Ashby lets each team tailor its application, and some postings add a short questionnaire on top, so set aside a few quiet minutes rather than a thirty-second sprint. Because the questions change per role, re-read the requirements above before you start typing; answers that echo the exact skills the listing names are the ones that survive screening. Two practical notes: apply promptly while the posting is verified live, since teams close applications once a role fills, and use one email address for the application so your details stay under one identity.

Before you start

Tailor your résumé to the skills this listing names — employers screen for the requirements they wrote.
Have your work-authorization details ready — citizenship, visas, and right-to-work countries come up on remote applications.
Use the listed range ($230k to $280k) as your anchor in salary talk — the employer published it, so it is a fair opening number.

Salary context

The listed range of $230k to $280k a year sits about 14% above the board-wide median for Backend Development roles on this board.

That median is $169,600 to $275,000 a year, based on 39 live listings where the employer publishes an annual USD range — the same rules as the board's salary report.

The parsed benefits on this listing include Stock Options / Equity, so total compensation can extend beyond this base range.

Quick answers

Is this job still open?
Yes. Listings on this board are re-verified 4 times a day and auto-expire 45 days after posting — if this page is visible, the role was open at the last check.
Where does the Apply button go?
Straight to Runway's own application page — never a middleman. Every listing here comes from the employer's own job board, so the Apply button simply opens their page in a new tab.
Does it require experience?
The employer tags this role as executive level — the requirements above spell out what that means in practice.
Is the salary listed?
Yes — the employer publishes an annual range for this role: $230k to $280k.
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Runway

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About the job

Posted on Oct 21, 2026
Apply before Dec 6, 2026
full-time
Worldwide
Salary
$230k to $280k

Skills

PythonGoMachine LearningData Science

Benefits

stock-options

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