If a high salary, remote work, and working with generative AI are all music to your ears, Netflix might have the perfect job for you. The streaming giant is actively recruiting a generative AI product manager to join its Productivity Assistant team, offering a competitive salary range of $240,000 to $700,000 per year for a fully remote position.
The position, posted on Sept. 23, seeks a product manager who will “shape and execute the road map for generative AI solutions designed to enhance personal, team, and organizational productivity across Netflix.” The role represents part of Netflix’s broader strategy to integrate AI throughout its operations, from content recommendations to visual effects production.
The role and its requirements
The ideal candidate will need at least six years of product management experience with a proven track record in enterprise applications, plus specialized expertise in AI technologies. Netflix specifically requires “solid foundational understanding of machine-learning concepts and terminology” including model training, fine-tuning, embeddings, and evaluation metrics.
The position demands hands-on experience with generative AI solutions and the ability to lead internal change management efforts for AI technology adoption. Candidates must be comfortable collaborating closely with engineering teams while making informed tradeoffs based on technical constraints and business impact.
The new hire will be responsible for developing product strategy for Netflix’s core Productivity Assistant experience, conducting user research to understand workforce needs, and experimenting with prompt engineering and conversational interfaces. The role also requires ensuring AI solutions align with Netflix’s values around safety, fairness, and transparency. You’ll also have to be a good team player and collaborator, as you’ll be working with Netflix’s legal, privacy, and ethics teams.
What is Netflix’s ‘Productivity Assistant’?
Netflix’s Productivity Assistant is the company’s internal AI-powered suite of tools designed to enhance workforce efficiency across its global operations of over 13,000 employees. While Netflix has long been known for its consumer-facing AI recommendation systems, the Productivity Assistant focuses exclusively on internal operations, helping Netflix employees work more efficiently by automating repetitive tasks and eliminating manual processes that previously consumed significant employee time.
A cornerstone of the system is Netflix’s Universal Search solution, which functions like Google Search, but operates within the company’s internal systems.
“Before the existence of this tool, 18% of employee time per employee, which is roughly around 416 hours per year, was wasted in searching for information within the company,” said Ruchi Agarwal, senior software engineer at Netflix, in a 2023 video presentation about the company’s software architecture. “This information could be anything, for example, contacts of other employees, or company policies, or legal, compliance-related information,” or even code, in case employees wanted to see how other teams executed.
The Productivity Assistant also includes intelligent support systems that handle Netflix’s approximately 150,000 annual internal support tickets, using AI-powered bots to manage routine requests like laptop provisioning and VPN connections.
The system extends to Netflix’s feedback culture, where the company is piloting generative AI capabilities to help employees navigate the company’s radical transparency approach. Given that Netflix employees may receive up to 40 pieces of feedback during review cycles, according to Greg Pilano, former director of talent technology and engineering at Netflix, the AI assistant can help identify key themes in feedback and makes it more actionable, while also assisting employees in crafting more constructive feedback for colleagues.
A competitive job: High salary and remote work
The salary range reflects the intense competition for AI product management talent across the technology sector. Industry data shows AI product managers command significantly higher compensation than traditional product managers, with salaries ranging from $150,000 to $200,000 for senior roles at most companies, while some positions reach up to $900,000 at top technology firms.
The demand for AI-focused product managers has surged recently as companies across industries—from health care and finance to retail and entertainment—are seeking experts who can actually translate AI’s capabilities into productivity, which is something that’s apparently pretty elusive. According to a widely shared MIT study, about 5% of AI pilot programs deployed at companies have boosted revenue, but 95% of the time, it’s had a negligible effect on the bottom line.
Netflix’s decision to offer this role as fully remote is a tacit endorsement of the idea that remote work isn’t just a perk, but a business strategy to attract top talent. At Netflix, corporate employees are expected to work in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but there’s been no broad RTO mandate for employees, and the company says, “Our U.S.-based team is happy to embrace remote work” in most of its other job listings.
The big picture: Netflix’s AI strategy
This hiring move aligns with Netflix’s comprehensive AI transformation across multiple business areas. The company has been systematically integrating AI into its entire content value chain, from script analysis and green-lighting decisions to postproduction and visual effects. This year, Netflix expanded its AI applications significantly, launching ChatGPT-powered conversational search features and AI-enhanced advertising formats. The focus on internal productivity tools suggests Netflix views AI-powered efficiency as a competitive advantage in its core entertainment business.