Product Manager, Data Partnerships and Licensing

Smule

25d • Hybrid

About The Position

Smule is hiring a Product Manager to own how its in-house models and proprietary audio and music data are licensed and delivered to business partners. The role serves technical customers—including research labs, audio software and hardware companies, AI developers, and music industry partners—and is responsible for understanding partner needs, defining appropriate offerings, and creating pipelines, interfaces, and documentation that make data assets usable, well-governed, and commercially viable while respecting licensing agreements and community privacy commitments.

The Product Manager will lead a dedicated cross-functional development pod spanning audio engineering, data architecture, and machine learning research. The role works with Labs and Engineering on technical feasibility, Legal on licensing and governance, and Business Development as a technical resource on partner calls. It is a B2B product role, not a sales role.

Requirements

• At least 4 years of product management experience, with a track record on technical, data, platform, or API products serving business or developer customers.
• Strong B2B product sense and the ability to identify customer needs, including unstated needs, and turn them into clear requirements.
• Strong project management fundamentals, including the ability to lead a multidisciplinary team, sequence complex deliverables, maintain a schedule, and reprioritize when circumstances change.
• Working knowledge of music rights and licensing sufficient to assess what agreements allow, identify risk in partner requests, and recognize when to consult Legal.
• Demonstrated fluency in audio and/or music information retrieval (MIR), with the ability to hold substantive technical conversations with researchers, audio engineers, and machine learning practitioners.
• Comfort with data infrastructure concepts, including pipelines, schemas, storage and processing trade-offs, and query interfaces; able to read specifications and reason about trade-offs.
• Excellent written communication for producing technical documents external partners depend on.
• Ability to prioritize effectively in a fast-paced, resource-constrained environment.

Nice To Haves

• Direct experience with data licensing, content licensing, or AI training-data partnerships.
• Hands-on background in audio engineering, digital signal processing (DSP), MIR research, or machine learning, including academic or applied research.
• Experience shipping developer-facing platforms, APIs, or SDKs, including documentation and versioning practices.
• Familiarity with data privacy and voice or biometric data regulation as applied to user-contributed recordings.
• Experience in music, audio, or entertainment technology.
• Comfort working directly with data in SQL or an equivalent.
• A bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Own the roadmap for data and model licensing offerings from discovery through definition and delivery.
• Determine which data assets are valuable to particular partners and connect that value to customer outcomes and Smule’s business goals.
• Define requirements for partner-delivery storage and processing pipelines, including formats, volumes, delivery cadences, and quality standards.
• Own internal and partner-facing interfaces for querying, previewing, and retrieving licensed data, including versioning, reliability expectations, and deprecation paths.
• Write and maintain technical documentation, specifications, and data dictionaries for partners.
• Lead a cross-functional pod of audio engineers, data architects, and machine learning researchers by setting priorities, sequencing work, and clearing blockers.
• Balance platform investment with partner-specific deliverables and adjust when partner priorities change.
• Navigate music rights and licensing questions, involving Legal when appropriate.
• Partner with Legal and Engineering on data governance, including provenance, rights and consent tracking, retention, auditability, and privacy obligations related to user-contributed audio.
• Act as a technical resource on partner calls with music and speech researchers, audio product engineers, and AI developers.
• Define and drive delivery-pipeline success metrics, including reliability, data quality, and time to fulfill partner requests.

Benefits

• Flexible time off
• 12 observed holidays
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and supplemental insurance, available from the first day of employment at low or no cost
• Employer-paid life and short-term disability insurance
• Employer contributions to employee HSA accounts
• Well-being subscriptions, including Headspace and Wellhub
• Cell phone and internet reimbursement to support hybrid work
• Home office stipend

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed