← benchling / Product Manager, Infrastructure
candidate_questions / art_3Mj9F_uHRsk
role
model
anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6
created
2026-10-05T04:51
Interviewer
Erik Nichols is a Recruiter at Benchling focused on Product teams, where he has been for nearly 8 years — making him one of the longest-tenured people on the talent side of the company. His background spans technical recruiting at Asana, Nextdoor, Lookout, and Sun Microsystems, giving him a strong lens on what strong product and engineering talent looks like across growth-stage companies. As a recruiter rather than a hiring manager or PM leader, this conversation will likely focus on culture fit, communication style, career narrative, and how Felix presents himself as a candidate — not deep technical or product strategy questions. There is no direct overlap in companies between Erik and Felix, but Erik's time at Asana (a developer-productivity and collaboration platform) and his long tenure at Benchling give him useful context on platform-oriented product roles.
Questions to ask them (18)
| category | question | why |
|---|---|---|
| interviewer_experience | You've been at Benchling for nearly eight years — that's rare tenure in recruiting, especially in the Bay Area. What's kept you here, and how has the company's direction evolved in ways that have made it feel worth staying? | Signals genuine curiosity about retention and company trajectory while inviting Erik to share his authentic perspective on Benchling's culture and growth — information a recruiter is uniquely positioned to give. |
| interviewer_experience | You came to Benchling from Asana, which was very much a team-productivity and collaboration platform. How did that experience shape the kind of product talent you look for, and do you see any parallels in how Benchling thinks about its own platform? | Builds rapport by referencing his actual background, and surfaces how he mentally frames 'platform PM' talent — useful for calibrating how Felix should position his own platform infrastructure experience. |
| interviewer_experience | Having recruited for Benchling's product teams across multiple hiring cycles and company phases, what's the most meaningful shift you've seen in what the company needs from product managers — say, compared to three or four years ago? | Leverages Erik's longitudinal view of the company to understand how the PM bar and expectations have evolved, which helps Felix understand what 'great' looks like right now. |
| role_team_dynamics | For this infrastructure PM role specifically, what does the first 90 days typically look like in terms of onboarding into the engineering teams and getting up to speed on the existing roadmap? | Practical signal about ramp expectations and whether there's a structured onboarding or whether the PM is expected to self-direct immediately. |
| role_team_dynamics | The JD mentions this PM will coordinate across orgs and share program management responsibilities with an engineering manager counterpart. Can you tell me more about how that partnership is structured — is there an EM already in place, and how have those partnerships worked historically? | Surfaces whether the EM relationship is established or in flux, and whether prior PM-EM dynamics have been healthy — important for understanding the actual working environment. |
| role_team_dynamics | When you think about the candidates who have thrived in infrastructure or platform PM roles at Benchling versus those who struggled, what's the most common differentiator you've observed? | Invites Erik to share pattern-matched insight from his recruiting experience — gives Felix direct signal on what to emphasize and what pitfalls to avoid. |
| role_team_dynamics | Is this a backfill, a new headcount, or an expansion of an existing team? And if it's a backfill, is there anything about what worked or didn't work with the previous person in the role that shaped how the JD was written? | Understanding the origin of the role reveals unspoken expectations and potential landmines — a recruiter is often the right person to ask this diplomatically. |
| technical_environment | The role mentions partnering on cloud economics — spend forecasting, commitments, credits, vendor roadmaps. Is that a new area of focus for this PM, or has it been part of the infrastructure PM charter for a while? | Helps Felix understand whether cloud economics is a mature practice at Benchling or a greenfield area, which affects how he should frame his relevant experience from Intuit's GCP-to-AWS migration and capacity planning work. |
| technical_environment | From a recruiting lens, when engineering interviewers evaluate a PM candidate for infrastructure, what are the technical signals they tend to weight most heavily — is it depth in a specific domain like observability or cloud cost, or more general systems intuition? | Erik has seen many candidates go through this loop and can give candid signal about what the engineering interviewers are actually looking for, helping Felix calibrate his technical narrative. |
| culture_working_style | The JD emphasizes making and holding prioritization calls — including saying no to senior stakeholders. How does Benchling's culture actually support a PM doing that? Is there executive air cover for infrastructure investment, or is that something the PM has to build from scratch? | Tests whether the stated expectation matches the cultural reality — a recruiter with eight years of tenure has seen how leadership actually behaves, not just what the JD says. |
| culture_working_style | Benchling mentions AI fluency as foundational to how everyone works. What does that look like in practice for a PM on the infrastructure side — are there specific tools or workflows the team has adopted, or is it more of an individual practice? | Directly relevant to the AI exercise mentioned in the JD, and signals Felix's genuine interest in integrating AI into his workflow — which he already does extensively. |
| culture_working_style | The hybrid policy is Monday, Tuesday, Thursday in-office. How does the team actually use those in-office days — is it structured collaboration time, or more of a presence expectation with organic interaction? | Practical and important for Felix to evaluate fit, and shows he's taking the logistics seriously rather than treating it as a checkbox. |
| growth_development | For a PM who comes in strong on the infrastructure and platform side but wants to grow their influence on Benchling's broader AI product direction over time — is that a path that's been navigated before, or does the infrastructure PM role tend to stay fairly siloed? | Felix has deep AI/ML experience and will want to understand whether there's a trajectory toward Benchling's AI scientist vision, not just infrastructure maintenance. |
| growth_development | What does professional development look like for PMs at Benchling — are there formal programs, mentorship structures, or is it more driven by the individual PM and their manager? | Signals long-term orientation and helps Felix evaluate whether Benchling invests in PM growth or expects self-directed development. |
| strategy_vision | Benchling's positioning as an 'AI platform for biotech R&D' is compelling — but infrastructure is often the unglamorous enabler of that vision. How does leadership communicate the strategic importance of infrastructure investment internally, so the team feels connected to the bigger mission? | Tests whether infrastructure is treated as a cost center or a strategic asset, which directly affects the PM's ability to build the business case the JD describes. |
| strategy_vision | The JD mentions helping engineering teams 'anticipate future needs and make strategic long-term investments.' With Benchling's AI scientist vision accelerating, what are the infrastructure bets the company is most focused on right now — scale, reliability, cost, or something else? | Surfaces the actual strategic priorities Felix would be walking into, and demonstrates that he's read the JD carefully and connected it to Benchling's public product direction. |
| strategy_vision | From your vantage point recruiting across the product org, where do you see Benchling investing most heavily in headcount over the next year — is infrastructure a growing priority, or is most of the growth on the application and AI product side? | A recruiter has a unique org-wide view of where investment is flowing, which helps Felix understand whether this role is a strategic priority or a gap-fill. |
| shared_context | I noticed you recruited at Asana, which was deeply focused on team productivity and developer collaboration tooling. My work at Intuit on developer frameworks and platform infrastructure had a similar internal-customer orientation — PMs serving engineers rather than end users. Did that experience at Asana shape how you evaluate platform-facing PM candidates differently than consumer or growth PM candidates? | Builds genuine rapport by connecting Erik's Asana experience to Felix's Intuit work, and invites him to share his mental model for evaluating platform PMs — directly useful for the rest of the interview process. |
Conversation starters
- I saw you've been at Benchling for nearly eight years — I'd love to hear what the company looked like when you joined versus now, because the trajectory from lab notebook software to AI platform for biotech is a pretty remarkable arc.
- Your time at Asana is interesting to me — I spent a lot of time at Intuit building developer-facing platform infrastructure, and Asana had that same internal-tooling DNA. I'm curious whether that experience influenced how you think about what makes a great platform PM.
- I noticed you have certifications in inclusive hiring practices through Textio — I've been thinking a lot about how AI tooling is changing the recruiting and hiring process, and I'd be curious to hear your perspective on where that's heading from someone who's been doing this for as long as you have.
⚠ Handle carefully
- Erik is a recruiter, not a PM or engineering leader — avoid asking deep technical infrastructure questions or product strategy questions that he won't be positioned to answer well; redirect those to the hiring manager or engineering interviews.
- Do not ask questions that imply Benchling has retention problems or that the infrastructure team is understaffed or struggling — Erik has been there eight years and will be protective of the company's reputation; frame any probing questions around opportunity rather than dysfunction.
- Avoid implying that the infrastructure PM role is a stepping stone to an AI product role too early in the conversation — while Felix's AI background is a genuine differentiator, signaling that he sees this role as temporary could raise fit concerns with a recruiter screening for commitment.