Job description

ABOUT OPENROUTER OpenRouter is the leading AI routing and infrastructure layer that developers and enterprises use to access, manage, and optimize their AI use across models and providers. We help our customers avoid lock-in, capacity constraints, and unnecessary cost, giving them the flexibility to move fast, scale confidently, and stay future-proof as models evolve. We provide a single control plane for AI: one place to set policy, manage spend, and track usage, cost, and performance across every model and provider. OpenRouter sits at the center of how developers and organizations discover, evaluate, integrate, and operate the world’s leading open and proprietary models. Increasingly, that access reaches end users through platforms that use OpenRouter as the managed inference layer for their customers. ABOUT THE ROLE We’re hiring the first Product Manager for OpenRouter Connect. Connect opens a new growth channel by letting partners offer multi-model inference to their customers inside their own products. We’re building a platform for platforms, enabling any company whose customers need inference to integrate and distribute it with the controls and observability that partners and their customers need. Connect is how enterprise and developer tools put the full model catalog in front of their users without building inference, policy enforcement, or usage metering themselves. You’ll own that surface end to end, working with engineering, design, and our partnerships and go-to-market teams. You’ll spend time with partners, learning what they need to serve their customers and turning that into a roadmap. You’ll own the abstractions that make Connect a product rather than one-off integrations. This role is for you if you’ve built platform or API products other companies build on, have worked through the identity, policy, and billing questions multi-tenant systems raise, and know the difference between an integration a partner can self-serve in a day and one that stalls. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Own the Connect roadmap end to end. You’ll own prioritization and requirements definition across partner integration and onboarding, provisioning APIs, controls and guardrails partners need per customer and per end user, and usage visibility and billing. - Set the strategy. Determine and prioritize the target partner segments and define the competitive positioning for each. Set the goals for Connect across partner and end user activation, engagement, and retention. - Work directly with design partners. Join prospect interest and integration calls, unblock their engineers, and understand partner and end customer needs to determine the roadmap. - Work with engineering and design to ship. Make scope and sequencing calls to ship fast, iteratively, and with a high bar of quality and developer experience. Ensure Connect is a set of reusable abstractions, not one-off integrations. - Push platform gaps back into the core. When Connect exposes a missing management endpoint, analytics dimension, or guardrail primitive, drive it into the core product so every OpenRouter customer benefits. - Shape the commercial model with go-to-market. Partner with our Partnerships and Finance teams on the business model and terms that make Connect a win-win-win for partners, their end customers, and OpenRouter. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR - 5+ years of product management or founder experience building platform, API, or infrastructure products that other companies' engineers build on. - You've shipped partner-delivered, multi-tenant products. Another company integrated, white-labeled, or resold what you built (B2B2B or B2B2Dev), and you've worked through the tenant, identity, and billing questions that come with it. - A zero-to-one track record. You’ve taken a product from design partners to general availability and are comfortable with the ambiguity, hard tradeoffs, and tight feedback loops that come with it. - High agency and a bias toward action. You talk to partners, write specs, ship, and iterate on a fast team with fluid boundaries. You write clearly and often. - Strong technical judgment. You read API specs, call the SDKs yourself, review observability and product metrics, and are opinionated about customer facing api surfaces, auth models, partner integrations, usage metering, and tenant isolation. NICE TO HAVE - Time at a developer platform, LLM ops, or AI gateway company, or building the embedded or OEM offering of an infrastructure product. - Familiarity with the controls partners’ enterprise customers need, such as access, budget, and DLP management. - Experience-informed opinions on tenant isolation, delegated administration, end-user identity, and per-tenant policy. - Background in usage-based billing and reporting. You’ve worked on metering, invoicing, or revenue share and understand what finance teams on both sides of a partnership need. - Existing user of OpenRouter or hands-on familiarity with the model and provider ecosystem. If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria above but are still interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box, and we’re looking for someone excited to join the team.

Requirements

Must-haves

Set the strategy. Determine and prioritize the target partner segments and define the competitive positioning for each. Set the goals for Connect across partner and end user activation, engagement, and retention.
Work directly with design partners. Join prospect interest and integration calls, unblock their engineers, and understand partner and end customer needs to determine the roadmap.
Push platform gaps back into the core. When Connect exposes a missing management endpoint, analytics dimension, or guardrail primitive, drive it into the core product so every OpenRouter customer benefits.
Shape the commercial model with go-to-market. Partner with our Partnerships and Finance teams on the business model and terms that make Connect a win-win-win for partners, their end customers, and OpenRouter.
5+ years of product management or founder experience building platform, API, or infrastructure products that other companies' engineers build on.
A zero-to-one track record. You’ve taken a product from design partners to general availability and are comfortable with the ambiguity, hard tradeoffs, and tight feedback loops that come with it.
High agency and a bias toward action. You talk to partners, write specs, ship, and iterate on a fast team with fluid boundaries. You write clearly and often.

Nice-to-haves

Time at a developer platform, LLM ops, or AI gateway company, or building the embedded or OEM offering of an infrastructure product.
Familiarity with the controls partners’ enterprise customers need, such as access, budget, and DLP management.
Experience-informed opinions on tenant isolation, delegated administration, end-user identity, and per-tenant policy.
Background in usage-based billing and reporting. You’ve worked on metering, invoicing, or revenue share and understand what finance teams on both sides of a partnership need.
Existing user of OpenRouter or hands-on familiarity with the model and provider ecosystem.
If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria above but are still interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box, and we’re looking for someone excited to join the team.

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