Job description

ABOUT US Vast.ai's cloud powers AI projects and businesses all over the world. We are democratizing and decentralizing AI computing—reshaping our future for the benefit of humanity. We are a growing and highly motivated team dedicated to an ambitious technical plan. Our structure is flat, our ambitions are out-sized, and leadership is earned by shipping excellence. ABOUT THE ROLE Vast.ai is seeking a Technical Product Manager to drive the backend our GPU cloud marketplace runs on. This is the software behind every live GPU rental (over 700k transactions a month): the daemon on every host's machines, the orchestration that powers each instance, and the infrastructure and test systems that let us ship it all at high velocity. The Scale: With over 20k GPUs, our AI cloud platform powers thousands of bleeding-edge training runs and critical production workloads for 120k+ developers all over the planet. This is a product with real scale, real data, and real users from day one. The work you ship moves tangible revenue in weeks, not quarters. The Challenge: We don't own the GPUs. Thousands of independent hosts price and operate them, and no two machines are alike. Your job is to make that heterogeneous, decentralized supply behave like the top-tier cloud our customers expect: fast, secure, and reliable. WHAT YOU'LL OWN You'll drive the infrastructure, security, and reliability roadmap: sequencing competing priorities, turning non-functional requirements into specs engineering can build, and seeing them through until they ship. You'll own the metrics that prove it worked: platform uptime, fleet reliability, cost-to-serve. Initial focus areas: - Scalability & performance. Keep the core systems fast and ahead of demand as the marketplace grows, from database performance to end-to-end latency. - Security, trust & compliance. Harden the platform against attacks and abuse, and build the compliance roadmap enterprise customers need. - Observability & infra tooling. Give every engineer a clear view of platform health, and every host a clear view of their fleet. Own the metrics, tracing, and tooling behind it. IDEAL EXPERIENCE - 3+ years as a backend engineer AND 3+ years in product management - Hands-on experience with several of: security, scalability, reliability at scale, infrastructure tooling, distributed systems, observability, abuse/fraud prevention, compliance - Industry experience in one or more of the following areas: software infrastructure, developer tooling (APIs, SDKs, CLIs), AI/ML, cloud computing, GPUs, or two-sided marketplaces - Experience at a fast-paced startup or rapid-growth team YOU ARE - AI-native. You work with AI agents every day, and you want to build the compute layer the AI era runs on. - Deeply technical. You came up as an engineer, and you reason about scalability, security, and efficiency as product concerns, not afterthoughts. - Persuasive across the stack. You can make a technical tradeoff legible to c-suite and a thankless migration compelling to the team doing it. - Biased toward action. You'd rather ship the fix today than present the plan next week. TECH STACK Python, C++, SQL/PostgreSQL, Redis, Linux, Docker, AWS, Terraform, REST APIs, LLMs/AI agents INTERVIEW PROCESS - Initial screening (virtual) - Deep dive on the role and your experience (virtual) - Live product and technical assessment (virtual) - In person panel interview + product and technical assessment (on-site) ANNUAL SALARY RANGE $170,000–$240,000 base depending on experience, plus equity. We're profitable, venture-backed, and growing, so the equity is a stake in a real company with a real valuation, not a lottery ticket. BENEFITS - Comprehensive health, dental, vision, and life insurance - 401(k) with company match - Meaningful early-stage equity - Onsite meals, snacks, and close collaboration with founders/tech leaders - Ambitious, fast-paced startup culture where initiative is rewarded - Ample AI agent budget LOCATION: On-site at our office in Los Angeles (Westwood).

Requirements

Must-haves

Scalability & performance. Keep the core systems fast and ahead of demand as the marketplace grows, from database performance to end-to-end latency.
Security, trust & compliance. Harden the platform against attacks and abuse, and build the compliance roadmap enterprise customers need.
Observability & infra tooling. Give every engineer a clear view of platform health, and every host a clear view of their fleet. Own the metrics, tracing, and tooling behind it.
3+ years as a backend engineer AND 3+ years in product management
Hands-on experience with several of: security, scalability, reliability at scale, infrastructure tooling, distributed systems, observability, abuse/fraud prevention, compliance
Industry experience in one or more of the following areas: software infrastructure, developer tooling (APIs, SDKs, CLIs), AI/ML, cloud computing, GPUs, or two-sided marketplaces
Experience at a fast-paced startup or rapid-growth team
AI-native. You work with AI agents every day, and you want to build the compute layer the AI era runs on.
Deeply technical. You came up as an engineer, and you reason about scalability, security, and efficiency as product concerns, not afterthoughts.
Persuasive across the stack. You can make a technical tradeoff legible to c-suite and a thankless migration compelling to the team doing it.
Biased toward action. You'd rather ship the fix today than present the plan next week.
Python, C++, SQL/PostgreSQL, Redis, Linux, Docker, AWS, Terraform, REST APIs, LLMs/AI agents
$170,000–$240,000 base depending on experience, plus equity. We're profitable, venture-backed, and growing, so the equity is a stake in a real company with a real valuation, not a lottery ticket.

Nice-to-haves

None flagged.

Application prep

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Keywords to mirror

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Platform: ashby
Effort: quick

Benefits

Benefits detected in the listing.

Dental

Vision

401(K)