Scientific Product Manager

People Operations Partner @ CuspAI; Berlin; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity in CuspAI

28 days holiday (DE, NL, UK)

Professional development budget

Time off to stay fresh

Job summary

CuspAI, a frontier AI company, is seeking a Scientific Product Manager to bring partner labs and their experimental workflows onto the CuspAI platform. You will own a set of partner labs, translate scientific needs into engineer-ready requirements, and collaborate with ML researchers and platform engineers to enable AI-driven experimentation in real laboratories.

You will work closely with materials scientists, ML researchers and engineers, taking onboarding from scoping to first closed-loop

Qualifications

• PhD in materials science, chemistry, physics, chemical engineering or related experimental discipline, or equivalent research experience.
• Hands-on experience with high-throughput or automated experimentation in industry, a national lab or academia.
• Proven track record translating scientific needs into requirements for engineers or automation vendors, and validating lab results.
• Firsthand understanding of how experimental data is produced and which metadata/provenance matter for ML-ready datasets.
• Depth in at least one materials domain and the curiosity to work across others.
• Working knowledge of Python for data handling and analysis; comfortable with APIs and data schemas.
• Strong communicator and collaborator across multidisciplinary teams.

Responsibilities

• Shape and prioritise the roadmap for how experimental data, protocols and campaigns enter the platform.
• Write requirements, specifications and acceptance criteria for engineers; coordinate with data team on models and provenance.
• Decide what to build, what to integrate, and what to leave to partners’ systems.
• Lead technical discovery with partner labs; map workflows, instruments, data systems, and onboarding patterns.
• Own onboarding from scoping to first campaign; create reusable patterns and docs for the team.
• Act as the scientific counterpart in partner meetings and workshops.
• Design optimisation campaigns with ML researchers, respecting throughput, noise and sample quality.
• Define validation benchmarks and evidence for partners.

Skills

Python

APIs & Data Schemas

Strong Communicator

Collaborative

Education

PhD in Materials Science or related field

Tools

LIMS/ELN systems

Job description

About CuspAI

CuspAI is the frontier AI company on a mission to solve the breakthrough materials needed to power human progress. While nature took billions of years to perfect molecules, we are harnessing AI to unlock trillion-dollar materials breakthroughs in months, not millennia. Our founding team is the most cited in the world, comprised of world-class researchers in AI, chemistry and engineering. We are working on some of the hardest and most important challenges including energy, clean water, the future of compute, and carbon capture, and this is just the start of what our 'search engine' for next-generation materials will unlock. We invite you to be part of a diverse, innovative team at the intersection of AI and materials science, working to create impactful partnerships that drive innovation, scalability, and industry collaboration. This work matters. Your work matters. We're on the cusp of the on-demand materials era. Join us.

The Role

Due to rapid growth in our partner lab network, we are seeking a Scientific Product Manager to join our Product team and bring partner labs and their experimental workflows onto the CuspAI platform.

Your impact

This is an exciting opportunity to join the product team at CuspAI, working closely with materials scientists, ML researchers and platform engineers to make AI-driven experimentation work in real laboratories. As one of a small team of Scientific Product Managers, you will take ownership of a set of partner labs and the lab integration work around them, translating what each lab actually needs into requirements our engineers and ML researchers can build against. Alongside the product work, you will spend real time with your partners' teams and their experimental data.

What You Will Do

Product Requirements & Roadmap

• Shape and prioritise the roadmap for how experimental data, protocols and campaigns get into the CuspAI platform, together with your fellow Scientific Product Managers, the engineering lead and the wider product team.

• Write requirements, specifications and acceptance criteria that engineers can build from, covering experiment types, instrument integrations and LIMS/ELN connections, and work with the data team on the underlying data models and provenance.

• Contribute to decisions on what we build, what we integrate, and what we leave to partners' existing systems.

Partner Lab Onboarding

• Lead technical discovery with the partner labs you take on: map their workflows, instruments, sample logic and data systems, and pin down the true experimental unit and the parameters that matter.

• Own onboarding for your partner labs from scoping to the first closed-loop campaign, and turn each onboarding into reusable patterns and documentation shared across the team so the next one is faster.

• Act as the main scientific counterpart for the partner labs you look after, and represent the product in partner meetings, workshops and conferences.

Closed-Loop Campaigns

• Work with ML researchers to design optimisation campaigns (e.g. Bayesian optimisation) that respect real experimental constraints such as throughput, noise and failed samples.

• Define how platform-driven campaigns are validated, including benchmarks against manual or legacy workflows, success metrics and the evidence we bring to partners.

Must Have Skills and Qualifications:

• PhD in Materials Science, Chemistry, Physics, Chemical Engineering or a related experimental discipline, or equivalent experience in scientific research.

• Hands-on experience with high-throughput or automated experimentation (e.g. robotic synthesis, combinatorial libraries, automated characterisation, or self-driving / closed-loop labs) in industry, a national lab or research institute, or academia.

• Proven track record of translating scientific or process needs into requirements for engineers, software teams or automation vendors, and of validating that what was built works in the lab.

• Firsthand understanding of how experimental data is produced and where it fails: which metadata and provenance matter, instrument quirks, data quality issues, and what makes a dataset usable for machine learning.

• Depth in at least one materials domain (e.g. semiconductors and thin films including photovoltaics, catalysis and electrochemistry, energy materials including batteries, polymers and formulations, or separations and surfaces) and the curiosity to work across others.

• Working knowledge of Python for data handling and analysis; comfortable working with APIs and data schemas.

• Strong communicator and a proven collaborator, comfortable working directly with external partner labs as well as multidisciplinary science, ML, product and engineering teams.

Bonus Points (But Not Critical):

• Direct experience with closed-loop optimisation in an automated setting, such as Bayesian optimisation, active learning or design of experiments.

• Experience with research data management, LIMS/ELN systems, FAIR data or metadata schemas, and familiarity with lab data standards (e.g. SiLA 2, AnIML, Allotrope).

• Instrument integration experience, including vendor software, data formats, and scheduling or orchestration.

• Product or project management experience, such as roadmaps, user research, external research collaborations or vendor relationships. We are equally open to strong experimental scientists making their first move into product.

• Experience working in industry at a materials, chemicals, energy or deep-tech company, or closely with industry at a research institution or national lab.

• Experience coordinating work across multiple labs, sites or countries.

Additional Considerations

This role could be based in any of our locations with the expectation of being in the office three days per week. Additionally, there may be regular travel required to partner labs and other locations for collaboration and project work.

What We Offer

• A competitive salary: We value and reward impact and growth

• Equity in CuspAI: You have a stake in the success of the company

• Time off to stay fresh: 28 days holiday (DE, NL, UK) or 21 days holiday (JP, SG, US), in addition to local public holidays

• 'Gold Standard' parental leave: 26 weeks (primary caregiver) and 12 weeks (secondary caregiver) at full pay - we look after you and your family while we work on the most important materials discovery problems together

• Professional development budget: We invest in your career development so you can stay up to date with the latest industry knowledge or add to your skills to increase impact and growth

• Solve meaningful problems: See how your work has a direct impact on advancing materials science and solving sustainability and climate-related problems through the creation and application of bleeding-edge SOTA technology and revolutionary techniques

• True interdisciplinary teamwork: Be part of a deeply collaborative environment bridging AI research, computational chemistry, and experimental science - work with world-class researchers and engineers who enjoy sharing knowledge and supporting each other

Join us in shaping the future of materials with AI. Together, we can create groundbreaking solutions for a more sustainable world.

CuspAI is an equal opportunities employer committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We do not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, disability, age, citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding), veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

We actively encourage applications from all backgrounds and value the unique perspectives and contributions that diversity brings to our team.

Please let us know if you require any specific adjustments during or after the interview process. We will do everything we can within reason to accommodate.