Senior Product Manager, Robot Platforms

Job description

We are seeking an experienced Senior Product Manager to work alongside management on the roadmap for the Avidbots cleaning robot platforms - Neo, Neo 2W, and Kas. You will report directly to the VP Product and work cross-functionally with Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Customer Success, and Sales to decide what we build next and to make sure it ships, sells, and holds up in the field.

This is a senior individual contributor role at the centre of the company. Our robots run in airports, warehouses, hospitals, factories, and schools on five continents, for customers like UPS, DHL, CVG Airport, Toyota and many others.

This is a role for someone who is comfortable being the person who says no when needed, who reads a warranty report as carefully as a customer interview, and who has shipped physical products to real customers before.

What You'll Do

Own the platform roadmap

• Own and publish the multi-quarter roadmap for Neo, Neo 2W, and Kas, with clear sequencing, trade-offs, and rationale that the whole company can read
• Collaborate with engineering management on release planning and escalation of issues. 
• Maintain a single prioritized backlog across different platforms, balancing new capability, cost reduction, reliability, and serviceability
• Partner with the VP Product on where the platform strategy is heading over a 2–3 year horizon, and translate that into what we build this quarter

Define what we build

• Write clear, testable product requirements that Engineering can act on without a translation layer
• Run discovery with facility managers, cleaning contractors, BSC operators, and channel partners
• Turn field data, customer feedback. command center data, service escalations, and warranty claims into prioritized product decisions
• Define acceptance criteria and partner with QA and Engineering on what "ready to ship" means for a machine that runs unattended around people

Support early product explorations

• Work with Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Quality through NPI of new efforts - DFM reviews, pilot builds, validation, and ramp
• Define the commercial readiness of every launch: positioning, pricing inputs, SKU and configuration structure, ROI story, sales enablement, and service documentation
• Partner with Customer Success and Field Service on deployment readiness, spares strategy, and serviceability before launch, not after
• Run launch reviews and post-launch reviews, and be honest about what missed

Own the outcomes

• Define and track the metrics that matter for each platform - present this alongside roadmap on Quarterly product review meetings.
• Build the business cases for major investments and bring it to the executive team with the numbers, not the enthusiasm
• Act as the escalation point for platform product questions from Sales, Customer Success, and channel partners worldwide
• Support Sales on strategic accounts and RFPs where expert knowledge and support is the deciding factor

What We Are Looking For

Required

• 5+ years in product management, with at least 3 years owning a physical product - robotics, industrial equipment, vehicles, medical devices, or comparable hardware with an embedded software stack
• Direct experience with a deployed installed base. You have owned a product after launch, lived with its failure modes, and made roadmap decisions based on what came back from the field
• Technical fluency sufficient to hold your own with mechanical, electrical, embedded, and software engineers, and to make credible feasibility calls. You do not need to write production code
• Demonstrated ownership of the commercial side: pricing inputs, positioning, SKU structure, business cases, and sales enablement
• Strong written communication. You will write requirements, roadmaps, and business cases that people act on without a follow-up meeting
• Comfortable making decisions with incomplete data and being accountable for them
• Willing to travel to customer sites and others, approximately 20–25%
• Based in or willing to relocate to the Waterloo Region; this role is on-site with our engineering and manufacturing teams

Preferred

• Experience with autonomous mobile robots, AGVs/AMRs, AVs, or another autonomy-enabled physical product
• Experience with a hardware product sold alongside a recurring software or service contract
• Background in B2B products sold to facilities, operations, logistics, or industrial buyers
• Experience with a channel or distribution sales model in addition to direct
• Proven track record taking a hardware product through NPI to volume production - you have been in DFM reviews, pilot builds, and ramp
• An engineering degree, or an engineering background earlier in your career
• Familiarity with safety and compliance regimes for mobile machinery operating around people
• Strong working knowledge of AI tools such as Claude Cowork/Code and strong interest in AI for product management use cases

The Kind of Person Who Thrives Here

• Willing to take initiatives and be proactive - you can determine next steps and problem-solve with limited direction
• Comfortable operating with a small product team and a wide surface area, and clear-eyed about what that means for prioritization
• Able to communicate clearly and hold a position with senior stakeholders, and to change it when the evidence changes
• Genuinely curious about how the machine works, and willing to go stand in a warehouse or retail store to find out why it stopped / deeply understand the problem
• Strong AI background and curiosity - we are increasingly leaning into AI, so we are looking for someone who is an expert user and excited to keep exploring ways to augment his/her work with AI

**We use artificial intelligence technology to assist in reviewing and screening applications for this position.