VP Product

About Current AI

Current AI is a first-of-its-kind global public-private partnership that brings together governments, foundations, and the private sector to build public interest AI at scale. Launched at the AI Action Summit in Paris in 2025, the organisation has already raised hundreds of millions through partnerships with the French government, AI Collaborative, and other leading governments, philanthropic, and industry partners.

If AI is the transformative revolution we perceive it to be, it needs to serve the public interest today and tomorrow. At Current AI, our goal is to help build a collaborative, collective, and global vision for AI, not one governed by a specific country or a company.

Today, there are builders and researchers around the world developing public interest AI building blocks (datasets, models, compute, audits and applications), but efforts are not always co-ordinated or additive. To have a genuine shot at being an alternative, we must harness the full breadth of work happening across open source and public interest AI. That means leveraging government influence and resources, philanthropic funding, and private sector expertise and scale towards building the alternative.

Role Overview

Our main product umbrella at Current AI is AI Potluck:, an open source project to build a vertically integrated and easy to use AI product assembled entirely out of open source components and built collaboratively with the open source ecosystem.

As VP Product and reporting directly to the CEO, you will lead the overall product strategy and product management organization for Current AI. You will own AI Potluck end to end: Alpha, our open source alternative to the closed AI assistants most people use today, the Gap Map, our insights product that shows the open source ecosystem where attention is needed, and the products that come after. You will partner with the Head of engineering and executive leadership to translate vision into scalable roadmaps and PRDs, running the product lifecycle from inception to launch. The goal is movement building through product, so the technology is the means and the measure is whether people and organizations adopt what we ship and contribute back to it. You will define what makes AI Potluck unique and why people should join the movement.

What you will be working on

AI Potluck has three parts today, and you will own all of them:

• Alpha, at , an assistant assembled entirely from open source components, launched in July 2026 at AI for Good in Geneva and in open testing since.
• The Gap Map, at , which shows where the open source AI ecosystem has gaps and where funding and contribution should go.
• The Alpha Public Router, a single endpoint serving models from public and mission aligned suppliers. It powers Alpha today and becomes a product for developers next.

Your first six months

• Take Alpha from testing to real everyday use inside a small number of partner organisations.
• Decide what the Public Router becomes as a product, and what we ask developers to do with it.
• Set the 2027 roadmap with partners and grantees.
• Increase our partners’ contributions on Alpha

How we will measure success

• Products shipped on the dates we announce publicly.
• Organisations actively using Alpha and the Router, not only registered.
• Open source projects integrated into the stack, and contributions we send back to them.
• Partners who move from a conversation to a shipped integration.
• A roadmap that partners can read without needing a meeting to understand it.

What you’ll do

The VP Product will be responsible for the following:

Product Strategy & Vision

• Lead the overall product vision and strategy, translating organizational mission into compelling product designs while prioritizing interoperability and completeness of the broader ecosystem stack over in-house build.
• Own the global product roadmap, bringing technical options, trade-offs, and strategic recommendations directly to the CEO and Board before roadmaps are finalized.
• Set the product policies, including the content policy for our products, the criteria for the models and suppliers we serve, and how we measure quality in each language.
• Drive the full product lifecycle, including PRD development, user story creation, and managing the roadmap from inception to launch.
• Structure work streams and maintain documentation for the roadmap, the release notes and partner communications, in line with company-wide guidelines on workspace tool.
• Drive high-impact product / feature launches ensuring they are delivered on time and effectively communicated to the ecosystem.
• Run the Product Sprint process, including the backlog, sprint planning & Weekly update, being ready to do some hands-on building when needed

Internal & External Alignment

• Work closely with the Engineering team to translate technical platform capabilities into tangible product features.
• Align internal engineering teams and external partners around a common product roadmap, working with leaders of funding projects, partner institutions and internal teams to facilitate collaboration and ensure that individual initiatives contribute to broader ecosystem products.
• Partner with leadership to identify and engage the right partners, ensuring external contributions (developers, organizations) are additive.
• Federate around the mission of Current AI, engaging with partners, grantees and the broader technical community to advance the ecosystem strategy and position Current AI as a trusted product coordination hub.

Team & Organizational Leadership

• Lead and empower product team and engineering leadership, directly overseeing the Head of Engineering and product teams to foster a high-performing, accountable builder culture.
• Plan resourcing and hiring collaboratively, proposing product and engineering resource plans and budgets for regular review with executive leadership.

Exploratory & Strategic Initiatives

• Collaborate with the Engineering Team and the CEO and broader leadership to identify and incubate new projects, prototypes, or product lines that address critical gaps in the public-interest AI stack.
• Engage with partners, grantees, and the community to advance the product strategy and position Current AI as a trusted hub for public-interest AI.

Balancing AI-assisted development and human judgment

• Set the vision for how we use AI coding tools while also keeping the most critical aspects of product human.
• Help the engineering team decide what we're building and for whom from first principles. Architecture is hard to reverse, and anything requiring quality, security or human judgment has to be designed that way.

What we’re looking for

Essential Qualifications

• 12-15+ years of experience in product leadership roles, including AI systems and managing cross-functional product and engineering organizations
• Experience designing and driving complex technical product roadmaps across distributed teams
• Collaborative and cross-functional working style; experienced in partnering with Engineering and Programme teams to surface and amplify impact.
• Strategic thinker about product ecosystems and platforms
• Builder mindset with a bias toward experimentation and shipping
• Fluent English with strong public speaking skills and capacity to adapt written communication for different audiences
• Executive maturity: proactive communicator to the CEO, skilled in executive coordination, and comfortable navigating complex public-private stakeholder environments
• Hands-on knowledge of LLM systems (evaluation, serving, safety)

Nice-to-haves

• Experience in open-source ecosystems, research-product organizations or public-interest technology initiatives
• Demonstrated ability to develop and execute product strategies that shift narrative and build movements
• French proficiency is a strong plus
• Experience in international organisations, foundations, or global advocacy movements.

Character traits

We’re looking for people who:

• Put the mission before personal credit and work well in low-ego, highly collaborative teams
• Exercise good judgment and integrity, including knowing when to push back or say no
• Enjoy building from scratch and making progress with imperfect information
• Have a bias to action, shipping useful things and helping others do the same
• Are comfortable moving between strategy and hands-on execution as needed
• Work effectively across cultures, time zones, and disciplines
• Believe AI can serve the public interest - and are willing to do the practical, unglamorous work to make that true.

How to apply

Please submit your resume through the button on the top right and answer the prompted questions in no more than [500] words in total:

Equal opportunity commitment

Current AI is committed to ensuring equal access to employment and preventing all forms of discrimination. All applications will be reviewed fairly, without regard to origin, sex, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, disability, religious beliefs, views held, or any other criteria unrelated to professional qualifications. Selection will be based solely on skills, experience, and suitability for the role.

Current AI does not accept unsolicited applications from recruitment agencies with whom we do not have a signed agreement. Current AI will not be liable for any fees or commissions in the event that a candidate submitted in this manner is subsequently hired.

Salary: Paris: 140,000 € - 180,000 € depending on experience. Our offers are adjusted based on location.

Originally posted on Himalayas