About IFM
The Institute of Foundation Models (IFM) is a global AI research lab dedicated to open and independent development of frontier-class foundation models. Launched in May 2025 by MBZUAI, IFM operates from advanced lab facilities in Abu Dhabi, Silicon Valley and Paris. IFM’s model portfolio includes K2 series, the fully open-source fleet of LLMs; Jais, the most advanced Arabic LLM; and PAN, the next-gen World Model for embodied reasoning and real-world simulation.
Role Summary
The Developer Relations Manager drives developer adoption of IFM’s large language models (LLMs). With the model itself as the product, the role helps model users, humans and agents alike, understand its capabilities, evaluate its suitability and build with it.
Based in Silicon Valley, you will work closely with users and builders across the full developer journey, from discovery and evaluation to integration and sustained use. You will work with researchers and engineers to translate that experience into model improvements, earning trust on both sides and using technical evidence to influence priorities without direct authority.
This is a hands-on technical role requiring practical experience building with LLMs and a sound understanding of their capabilities, limitations and use in real applications.
Travel requirement: Up to 25%
Key Responsibilities
- Build relationships with model users and builders, identify valuable use cases, and support adoption from discovery and evaluation through integration and sustained use.
- Develop and maintain model guidance, documentation and tested examples for human developers and coding agents, including tool calling, structured outputs and multi-step workflows.
- Represent IFM’s LLMs through technical demonstrations, talks and workshops, explaining their capabilities and limitations clearly and working with Community to reach relevant builders.
- Work with ecosystem partners and open-source maintainers to enable reliable use of IFM’s models in relevant frameworks, inference tools and agent environments.
- Investigate adoption barriers and reproduce issues across model behavior, integration and deployment, translating findings into evaluation cases and recommendations that influence research priorities.
- Work with Developer Experience (DevEx) and model engineers to prioritize technical improvements, resolve issues and validate results with users.
- Engage early users before release, assess readiness for developer use, and track successful integrations, task outcomes and sustained adoption after launch.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Experience in developer relations, applied AI engineering, developer experience or a comparable technical role, with a track record of helping developers adopt technical products.
- Hands-on experience building, evaluating and deploying applications with LLMs, with sound judgment about model capabilities, limitations and trade-offs in quality, latency and cost.
- Strong Python skills, with the ability to independently build working examples, test integrations and diagnose problems.
- A portfolio of clear technical documentation, tutorials, demonstrations or open-source contributions, supported by experience explaining complex concepts directly to developers.
- Experience working closely with researchers and engineers, using reproducible evidence and clear reasoning to influence priorities without direct authority.
- Familiarity with the LLM developer ecosystem, including inference tools, application frameworks and agent workflows, and experience collaborating with technical users, partners or maintainers.
- Contributing to model launches, early-access programs or open-source integrations.
- Working with open-weight models, including fine-tuning or self-hosted deployment.
- Developing guidance and examples that coding agents can use reliably, alongside supporting human developers.
Academic qualifications
Minimum requirements
Preferred experience
Visa Sponsorship
Skills Required
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Experience in developer relations, applied AI engineering, developer experience, or a comparable technical role helping developers adopt technical products.
- Hands-on experience building, evaluating, and deploying applications with large language models.
- Strong Python skills for building examples, testing integrations, and diagnosing problems.
- Portfolio of technical documentation, tutorials, demonstrations, or open-source contributions.
- Experience explaining complex technical concepts directly to developers.
- Experience working with researchers and engineers and influencing priorities through reproducible evidence and clear reasoning.
- Familiarity with the LLM developer ecosystem, including inference tools, application frameworks, and agent workflows.
- Experience collaborating with technical users, partners, or open-source maintainers.
- Experience contributing to model launches, early-access programs, or open-source integrations.
- Experience working with open-weight models, including fine-tuning or self-hosted deployment.
- Experience developing guidance and examples that coding agents can use reliably.
What We Do
First a passion, then an idea transformed into success – when it comes to pioneering automation and digitalisation technology, the ifm group is the ideal partner. Since its foundation in 1969, ifm has developed, produced and sold sensors, controllers, software and systems for industrial automation and for SAP-based solutions for supply chain management and shop floor integration worldwide. As one of the pioneers of Industry 4.0, ifm develops and implements consistent solutions to digitalise the entire value chain “from sensor to ERP”. Today, the second-generation family-run ifm group has more than 8,750 employees and is one of the worldwide market leaders. The group combines the internationality and innovative strength of a growing group of companies with the flexibility and close customer contact of a medium-sized company.
