Founding Technical Program Manager

Preference Model•San Francisco, CA

10d•$180,000 - $240,000•Onsite

About The Position

Preference Model is hiring its first Technical Program Manager to own relationships with frontier lab customers. The role has broad ownership across the customer lifecycle, including sales, delivery coordination, scope expansion, and contract negotiation. The platform team owns technical delivery, while the Technical Program Manager partners with that team to keep projects on track. The role will help determine which labs and markets to pursue, shape pricing and packaging, translate customer feedback into priorities, and build Preference Model’s go-to-market playbook and repeatable processes. There may eventually be an opportunity to expand the team. The position reports directly to a co-founder and works onsite in San Francisco alongside leadership, the capabilities team, and the platform team. Success means projects ship on mutually trusted timelines and customer relationships grow into larger engagements.

Requirements

Experience building something from the ground up, such as at an early-stage startup, as a founder, or in venture capital.
A computer science or closely related technical degree, or previous software engineering experience.
External customer-facing experience, such as as a forward deployed engineer, in customer success or operations, as a product manager, or in venture capital.
At least 2 years of relevant experience.
Experience negotiating commercial terms, such as customer contracts, pricing, or investment deals.
Confidence working with senior technical stakeholders and the follow-through to manage multiple relationships at once.
Ability to push back on unrealistic requests, communicate bad news early, and ensure nothing is dropped.

Nice To Haves

Experience with LLM training or post-training; described as strongly preferred.
Experience at a frontier AI lab, neo lab, or neocloud.
Experience at a company known for strong customer support.
Familiarity with RL environments, evaluations, benchmarks, or post-training data such as RLHF or RLVR.
Public writing, such as a blog, newsletter, or essays, or activity on social media.
Experience as a software engineer or forward deployed engineer followed by roles combining technical depth with ownership of customer outcomes.
Experience with LLM training or post-training.
Experience founding a company and selling directly to technical buyers.
Experience running engagements for frontier lab customers at an AI data, evaluation, or RL environment company.

Responsibilities

Own relationships with frontier lab customers, serve as their main point of contact, advance each relationship, and grow accounts into larger engagements.
Work with leadership to decide which labs and markets to pursue and where to focus as the RL environments market changes.
Run the sales cycle by sending samples, learning customer needs, and turning early conversations into scoped projects.
Shape pricing and packaging and negotiate contracts with the co-founders.
Build feedback loops that turn customer feedback into focus areas and priorities.
Coordinate with the internal team to keep delivery on track, set realistic timelines, review purchase orders, and partner with the platform team on technical delivery.
Represent Preference Model publicly through writing, events, and participation in the AI community.
Build the go-to-market function from scratch, including repeatable approaches and playbooks for selling, scoping, contracting, and delivery.