Technical Product Manager - Robotics and Automation (Core Platform)

The Role

We are looking for a Technical Product Manager to own the robotics and autonomy layer of our self-driving lab: the Workcells, instruments, control software, sim environment, and perception workflows that turn an AI decision into a physical experiment and a trustworthy result. The faster and more reliably the lab runs, the faster our customers get answers.

There is no established PM playbook for an autonomous materials lab, and we are not looking for someone to follow one. You will report to our Co-founder and President and work directly with robotics, hardware, and software engineers, and the scientists who depend on the lab. You will spend real time on the lab floor. Those conversations are substantive and sometimes contentious. This is a team with strong opinions and the technical depth to back them up.

This is not a coordination role. You will define what the lab must be able to do, make the tradeoffs between throughput, reliability, flexibility, and cost, and hold the thread from requirements through design, build, and deployment. That means defending a product position when engineers push back, knowing when to stand firm and when to update your view, and earning credibility through judgment rather than authority. If your instinct is to track a schedule rather than own an outcome, or to defer rather than decide, this is not the right fit.

What You'll Own

Workcells and hardware:

• The Workcell roadmap: which experiments the lab can run, which instruments and robots get added, and what gets built versus bought.
• Requirements for new Workcells and instrument integrations, from first customer problem through design review, build, commissioning, and handoff to operations.
• Hardware lifecycle decisions: prototype, pilot, and production readiness, with clear exit criteria at each stage.

Autonomy and control:

• The software that runs the physical lab: scheduling, orchestration, robot and instrument control, sample handling, and error recovery.
• How much autonomy the lab has and where a human stays in the loop. You set the standard for when the system may act without a person.
• Calibration, traceability, and data quality at the point where physical measurements become data.

Operations and performance:

• The metrics that define lab performance: throughput, uptime, experiment success rate, time to result, and cost per experiment.
• Reliability: failure modes, diagnostics, monitoring, and maintainability, in partnership with the engineers and operators who run the lab every day.
• Safety and compliance requirements for hazardous materials, high-temperature and high-pressure processes, and robot and operator interaction.

Cross-functional:

• Work closely with robotics and controls engineering, science, and ML research to keep the roadmap grounded in both technical reality and user need. The Technical PM (Software and Agents) owns the core platform and agent layer that decides what to run; you own the physical system that runs it. Together you own the interface between the two.
• Collaborate with PMs and technical leads at partner and customer organizations on instrument integration, site requirements, and deployment.
• Communicate product direction clearly, both to the engineers building it and to leadership deciding where to invest.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• Experience. 5-7 years in product management or a highly cross-functional engineering role, including at least 2 years on robotics, automation, or integrated hardware and software products, ideally at a technical or deep-tech company.
• Technical credibility. You are fluent across automation disciplines such as robotics, controls, mechatronics, and mechanical engineering. You understand how sensors, actuators, mechanisms, and software work together well enough to challenge assumptions, judge a design, spot risk, and turn engineering constraints into clear requirements and priorities.
• Production readiness. You have matured automated or semi-automated processes in production, built reliability test suites, and decided when a system was ready to scale throughput.
• Hardware delivery. You have taken a physical product from prototype through production, trading off cost, schedule, and reliability within hardware constraints.
• Technical discovery. You have led discovery with customers or internal stakeholders, challenged incomplete requirements, and surfaced missing operational constraints.
• Influence. You set priorities and earn alignment across hardware, software, and science teams, without authority.
• First principles. You reason from first principles and build structure where none exists.

Nice to have:

• Experience with laboratory automation, such as liquid handlers, synthesis and characterization instruments, or lab scheduling software.
• Experience with robot software stacks, simulation, or autonomy and reinforcement learning systems.
• Familiarity with industrial automation and integration standards, such as PLCs and OPC UA.
• Experience with safety, regulatory, or quality requirements for hardware in lab or industrial settings.
• Exposure to enterprise or government customers in deep-tech or regulated industries, including on-site deployments.