--- title: 'Product Director, Video Products at Cantina' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/product-director-video-products-cantina-california-zk16p9n7h5ky' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-12' --- # Product Director, Video Products at Cantina - **Company:** Cantina - **Location:** California - **Employment:** full-time - **Posted:** 2025-12-04 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cantina/61f2278e-e41d-4627-9b7a-34adbe735a8e ## Job description About Cantina: Cantina Labs is a social AI company, developing a suite of advanced real-time models that push the boundaries of expression, personality, and realism. We bring characters to life, transforming how people tell stories, connect, and create. We build and power ecosystems. Cantina, our flagship social AI platform, is just the beginning. If you're excited about the potential AI has to shape human creativity and social interactions, join us in building the future! About the Role: Cantina is seeking a product director to own the entire video experience on our platform—from creation and editing tools to publishing workflows. You will work closely with leadership and cross-functional teams to shape the strategy and execution of video products that enable creators to generate, edit, and share AI-driven video content seamlessly. This is a high-ownership role: you will not only set the vision and strategy but also execute in the product, ensuring creators have intuitive, high-quality tools to generate and share AI-driven video content. You’ll collaborate directly with creators and users to understand their needs, then define the roadmap and drive high-impact initiatives that enhance our video product offerings. This role requires a deep understanding of video creation tools, editing workflows, and creator-centric UX, combined with curiosity about AI. What You’ll Do: - Own all video products at Cantina, from ideation to launch, ensuring a seamless creator experience. - Partner closely with engineering, client teams, design, and data to ship high-quality video features - Work closely with the executive team on strategy, prioritization, and roadmap decisions. - Talk to creators and users directly to gather feedback and insights for iterative product improvements - Define and iterate on video creation and editing workflows, including trimming, effects, filters, publishing, and sharing. - Balance short-term execution with long-term product strategy to scale Cantina’s video platform. - Ensure all video products are intuitive, performant, and meet the expectations of a diverse creator base What You’ll Bring: - 7+ years of experience in product management, ideally with 3+ years in video creation tools, video editing, or video platform products - Strong understanding of consumer video products and workflows (CapCut, Instagram Reels, iMovie, TikTok, or similar). - Interest and familiarity with AI or generative media, with the ability to understand model capabilities as they apply to video creation - Founder mentality: resourceful, hands-on, and comfortable navigating ambiguity. - Experience with real-time video rendering, AI-driven video effects, or mobile video UX. - Strong collaborator who can work across engineering, design, data, and leadership teams - Student-of-the-craft mindset: eager to learn existing systems, enhance workflows, and avoid unnecessary rewrites - Excellent communication skills, able to convey complex concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders - Startup or early-stage experience shipping major product verticals. - Deep personal interest in video creation and storytelling. Compensation: The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is between $200,000-$260,000. When determining compensation, a number of factors will be considered, including skills, experience, job scope, location, and competitive compensation market data. Benefits: - Competitive salary and generous company equity - Medical, dental, and vision insurance – 99.99% of premiums covered by Cantina - 42 days of paid time off, including: - 15 PTO days - 10 sick days - 15 company holidays - 2 floating holidays - Generous parental leave & fertility support - 401(k) retirement savings plan - Lifestyle spending account – $500/month to use however you’d like - Complimentary lunch and snacks for in-office employees - One Medical membership, and more! ## About Cantina ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Cantina is a social AI platform that lets users create, chat with, and share AI characters that talk, perform, and interact in real-time. - **Entity Type**: Private (Seed Stage) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2023 - **Founders**: Not publicly listed; key leadership includes Co-Founder Prakash Ramakrishna ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Social AI / Social Media / Software Development - **Target customers**: B2C (consumers), with a creator/developer ecosystem for building AI characters - **Mission or purpose**: "Infinite Creativity Unlocked" — bringing AI characters to life to transform how people tell stories, connect, and create. ## Products & Services - **Cantina App**: A social media platform where users chat with friends and AI, create video messages, share with friends, and "set bots free." The flagship product is a mobile-first experience focused on real-time AI character interaction. - **Cantina AI Models**: A suite of advanced real-time models pushing the boundaries of expression, personality, and realism for AI characters. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company) - **Key Metric**: Total Funding — Seed Round (1 investor, amount undisclosed); 148 employees as of mid-2026 - **Notable Investors/Partners**: 1 seed investor (name not publicly disclosed); member of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) - **Growth Signals**: - Headcount grew 7.2% YoY (+29 people) to 148 employees - Monthly website traffic growth of +47.7% and yearly growth of +149.8% - Active job postings: 13 (yearly job posting growth of +44.4%) - Operates in 15 countries with 4 offices (San Francisco HQ, Sunnyvale, Brooklyn NY, and another Brooklyn location) - High LinkedIn follower growth (+9.9% yearly) reaching 22,462 followers ## Competitive Advantages - **Real-time AI character technology**: Builds proprietary real-time models for expression, personality, and realism — a technical moat in the rapidly growing social AI space. - **Creator ecosystem**: Allows users to build and release their own AI characters, creating a network effect and UGC flywheel. - **First-mover in social AI**: One of the earliest platforms combining social networking with generative AI characters for mass consumer use. - **Strong talent pool**: Employees recruited from top tech companies including Airtime (18), Aircore (26), Meta (4), Grammarly (4), TikTok (4), Amazon (3), and BeReal (4). ## Strategic Focus - **Product expansion**: Actively hiring for Kotlin Multiplatform Engineer, iOS Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer (Images), and Media Software Engineer (Speech) — indicating a push toward cross-platform mobile, image generation, and speech capabilities. - **Safety and trust**: Joined the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) in 2025 and invested heavily in trust & safety infrastructure, signaling a commitment to responsible AI. - **Monetization and growth**: Hiring a Head of Product Marketing, Creator Partner Manager, and Product Managers for Video and Web — suggesting moves toward monetization, creator partnerships, and web-based experiences. - **Research-driven**: Actively recruiting ML engineers and research talent, with 10% of workforce in Research roles. ## Why Work Here - **Cutting-edge AI work**: Engineers work on real-time AI models for speech, images, and character interaction — at the intersection of generative AI and social media. - **Strong technical culture**: 66 employees (15% of workforce) in Technical roles, with a tech stack including PyTorch, TensorFlow, Kubernetes, Docker, GCP, Snowflake, and modern mobile frameworks (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Swift). - **Growth stage**: At 148 employees and 13 open roles, this is a growth-stage startup where new hires can have outsized impact. - **Flexible locations**: Offices in San Francisco (HQ), Sunnyvale, and Brooklyn (two locations) — with a distributed workforce across 15 countries. - **Creative, fun environment**: Company culture emphasizes creativity ("Minister of Bots" is a real title) and viral social experiences. - **Notable perks**: Team has a dedicated Comedy Director and "Chief Horse Officer" — indicating a playful, unconventional culture. - **High talent density**: Recruits from top AI and social media companies (Meta, TikTok, Grammarly, Amazon, Apple, Netflix alumni). ## Sources 1. [cantina.com](https://cantina.com/) 2. [LinkedIn - Cantina Labs](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cantinaai) 3. [Cantina Careers (Ashby)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cantina) 4. [Cantina Careers Page](https://cantina.com/careers) ## Other roles at Cantina - [Research Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/research-intern-cantina-singapore-0t2dg9nfd7y1) — Singapore - [Machine Learning Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-intern-cantina-singapore-wnsca7rtewty) — Singapore - [Product Manager, Growth - Lifecycle](https://feeny.ai/job/product-manager-growth-lifecycle-cantina-san-francisco-fs4n56y79qc2) — San Francisco, CA - [Payments & Risk Operations Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/payments-risk-operations-manager-cantina-bay-area-8vxjey1a9qp4) — Bay Area, OR - [Media Software Engineer, Speech (Senior-Staff Levels)](https://feeny.ai/job/media-software-engineer-speech-senior-staff-levels-cantina-sunnyvale-amr9rvpwq2gp) — Sunnyvale, CA - [Machine Learning Engineer - Voice Conversion](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-voice-conversion-cantina-united-states-europe-fpbamgtxrfs0) — United States / Europe - [Machine Learning Engineer, Speech - Joint Audio-Video Modeling](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-speech-joint-audio-video-modeling-cantina-united-81jhte7m6h5q) — United States / Europe - [Machine Learning Engineer, Ops](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-ops-cantina-united-states-europe-zr6h1nf499dk) — United States / Europe - [Director, Brand Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/director-brand-marketing-cantina-los-angeles-dhngs7psnehq) — Los Angeles, CA - [Senior Creative Strategist, Performance Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-creative-strategist-performance-marketing-cantina-remote-gxzcxj5fv99e)