Product Lead

Product Lead at Inception Labs scores 70 out of 100 on AI centrality, which makes it AI Level 3 of 4 (Works on AI) on this board. The level measures how much of the work is AI, not seniority.

San Mateo, United Statesleadfull_time

AI in this role

openaidatabricks

ai-research

Inception creates the world’s fastest, most efficient AI models. Our Mercury model is the world’s fastest reasoning LLM and first commercially available diffusion LLM, delivering 5x greater speed and efficiency than today’s LLMs, with best-in-class quality.
We are the AI researchers and engineers behind such breakthrough AI technologies as diffusion models, flash attention, and DPO.
The Role Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer and working closely with the founding team, this role provides an opportunity to own and define Inception’s product direction. As the Product Lead, you'll synthesize customer needs, ecosystem trends, and breakthrough AI research into products that transform how millions of users work, create, and solve problems.
This role requires a leader who’s comfortable driving innovation in uncharted territory, where the very nature of what's possible with AI is being redefined every day.
The ideal candidate is a data‑driven, customer‑centric product builder who operates comfortably at the intersection of advanced AI research and pragmatic product delivery. They have shipped 0→1 products, scaled 1→N, and are credible with highly technical teams. They bring strong judgment in fast‑changing environments, communicate crisply with executives and partners, and can translate subtle user needs into instant‑speed experiences.
Key Responsibilities

Own end-to-end product lifecycle from strategy through launch
Conduct user research and analyze performance metrics specific to AI model behaviors and map these onto emerging use cases
Lead cross‑functional execution across Engineering, Infrastructure, Security, and Go-to-Market teams.
Help design evaluation systems and live benchmarks to track and improve speed and quality in target use cases
Set performance targets that connect model capabilities to user needs.
Partner with early customers to prove value in target use cases and convert pilots into repeatable product bets.

Qualifications

5+ years of product management experience
BS/MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field (or equivalent experience)
Extensive track record of driving product initiatives in rapidly changing technical landscapes and translating large and diverse sets of feature requests and feedback into product feature definitions
Comfortable reading and writing code: able to prototype, explore APIs, and work closely with engineering teams

Preferred Experience

Experience conducting user research and interviews
Deep knowledge of LLMs at the modeling or application layer
Experience working in a startup and scaling products from early stage to growth phase

Compensation

The annual base salary range for this role is $200,000 – $350,000 USD. Final compensation is determined based on experience, skills, and qualifications. Equity and benefits are included in the total package.
Why Join Inception

Work with World-Class Talent: Collaborate with the inventors of diffusion models and leading AI researchers
Shape Foundational Technology: Your decisions will influence how the next generation of AI products are built and used
Immediate Impact: Join at the ground floor where your contributions directly shape product direction and company trajectory

Perks & Benefits

Competitive salary and equity in a rapidly growing startup
Flexible vacation and paid time off (PTO)
Health, dental, and vision insurance
401k match
Catered meals (breakfast, lunch, & dinner)
Commuter subsidies
A collaborative and inclusive culture

About UsInception creates the world’s fastest, most efficient AI models. Today’s autoregressive LLMs generate tokens sequentially, which makes them painfully slow and expensive. Inception’s diffusion-based LLMs (dLLMs) generate answers in parallel. They are 5x faster and more efficient, while delivering best-in-class quality.
Inception was co-founded by Stanford professor Stefano Ermon, who co-invented such breakthrough AI technologies as diffusion models, flash attention, and DPO, UCLA professor Aditya Grover, who co-invented node2vec, decision transformers, and d1 reasoning, and Cornell professor and Afresh co-founder Volodymyr Kuleshov, who co-invented MDLM and Block Diffusion.
We pioneered the application of diffusion to language, with world’s first (and only) commercially available dLLM, Mercury. We are currently deploying our large-scale diffusion LLMs at Fortune 500 companies. Diffusion is the technology behind today’s image and video AI, and we’re making it the standard for LLMs as well.
Our team includes engineers from AWS, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, Microsoft, HashiCorp, and OpenAI. Based in Palo Alto, CA, we are backed by top-tier venture capitalists, including Menlo Ventures, Mayfield, M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund), Snowflake Ventures, Databricks, and Innovation Endeavors, and by tech luminaries such as Andrew Ng, Andrej Karpathy, and Eric Schmidt.
If you are talented, innovative, and ambitious, come help us invent the future of AI.We are an equal opportunity employer and encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply.

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Skills and AI tools this role asks for

AI ResearchOpenAIDatabricks

Questions you could be asked

Tell me about a research question you investigated. What did you find?
Walk me through how you've used OpenAI in your day-to-day work.
What are the limits of Databricks that you've run into, and how did you work around them?
Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
If you removed AI from this role, what would be left, and how do you decide what still needs a human?

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