Product Manager - Preclinical Device

Netholabs Ltd.; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 100,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Netholabs Ltd. in London leads in neural and behavioural recording platforms. The hardware product manager will own R&D delivery across the London lab, co-developing hardware with electronics and mechanical engineers, importing best practices for data capture, and coordinating contract manufacturers to scale.

This hands-on role combines lab work and supplier conversations to turn prototypes into field-deployable, manufacturable systems and drive the product roadmap to delivery.

Qualifications

• Essential: 3+ years in hardware product management, engineering, or programme management with several products moved from prototype to volume manufacture.
• Direct experience with contract manufacturers: running RFQs, NPIs, yield discussions, and remote problem solving.
• Deep understanding of connected-device architecture: OTA updates, provisioning, telemetry, fleet management.
• Fluency across electronics, mechanical, and firmware to hold technical conversations with engineers.

Responsibilities

• Own R&D delivery across the London lab and hardware programme; co-develop hardware with engineers; manage data capture protocols.
• Define and build OTA update infrastructure: firmware, versioning, rollback, fleet management, remote diagnostics.
• Oversee design-for-manufacture transitions: DFM/DFA reviews, BOM ownership, tolerancing, test fixtures, production testing.
• Identify and manage contract manufacturers and suppliers from RFQ through NPI to sustained production.

Skills

Hardware product management

Product engineering

Programme management

Prototype to volume manufacture

RFQ management

NPI onboarding

Education

Neuroscience / Biomedical engineering background

Tools

RFQ management

NPI manufacturing

OTA update systems

Job description

Compensation: £100,000–£140,000/year depending on experience · Equity / stock options

Location: London, with occasional travel.

About Netholabs

Netholabs builds large-scale neural and behavioural recording platforms to generate the data needed for the next generation of brain models. We operate two recording platforms: a preclinical ethological monitoring system integrated with behaviour and neural data and a human motion-capture and neurophysiology platform. We are a small, fast-moving team where hardware, neuroscience, and ML sit in the same room.

The Role

We are building integrated human motion-capture and neurophysiological recording systems for both controlled lab studies and naturalistic, in-the-wild data collection. Today we have working prototypes. We need someone to turn them into products - reproducible, manufacturable, remotely updatable systems that can be deployed at scale and maintained without an engineer in the room.

You will own R&D delivery across the London lab and hardware programme: co-developing the hardware with our electronics and mechanical engineers, importing and enforcing best-practice data capture protocols, and engaging contract manufacturers to scale. This is an agentic, hands‑on role -with support engineer roles as required. You will spend as much time in the lab and on the phone with suppliers as you will in a spec document.

What you'll do

• Take working prototypes to shippable, field-deployable systems — define the product, own the roadmap, and drive it to delivery
• Specify and build out over-the-air update infrastructure: firmware, versioning, rollback, fleet management, remote diagnostics
• Own the design-for-manufacture transition — DFM/DFA reviews, BOM ownership, tolerancing, test fixtures, and production test protocols
• Identify, qualify, and manage contract manufacturers and suppliers; own the relationship from RFQ through NPI to sustained production
• Establish and enforce best-practice data capture protocols across modalities (EEG, fNIRS, EMG, pupillometry, motion capture, video) so that data quality is consistent across sessions, operators, and sites
• Define the requirements that make in-the-wild collection viable: wearability, session setup time, robustness, battery life, and unattended operation
• Work directly with our electronics, mechanical, firmware, and neuroscience teams to translate research needs into hardware requirements — and push back when a requirement doesn't survive contact with manufacturing
• Build the quality, documentation, and regulatory groundwork (design history, ISO 13485-style discipline, CE/UKCA pathway) appropriate to a research-device product
• Contribute to the industrialisation of our rodent recording platform where the manufacturing and OTA problems overlap

What we're looking for

Essential

• Min 3+ years (ideal 7+) in hardware product management, product engineering, or programme management, with several products you personally took from prototype to volume manufacture
• Direct, demonstrable experience with contract manufacturers: you have run RFQs, sat through NPI builds, argued about yield, and fixed a production line problem from 6,000 miles away
• Deep understanding of connected-device architecture: OTA update mechanisms, device provisioning, telemetry, fleet management, and what it costs to get these wrong
• Fluency across electronics, mechanical, and firmware enough to hold a real technical conversation with each - you don't need to design the board, but you need to know when the answer you're getting is wrong
• Track record of writing specifications and protocols that people actually follow
• Comfort with ambiguity and a small-company reality: no PMO, no roadmap tooling team, no one to delegate the boring parts to

Strongly preferred

• Experience with wearable, biosignal, or medical device hardware
• Familiarity with human research data collection — protocols, participant handling, IRB/ethics, GDPR and special-category data
• Experience shipping a product to CE/UKCA or FDA pathway
• Background in neuroscience, biomedical engineering, or a related field
• Experience with multi-sensor time synchronisation and the data infrastructure behind it

What we offer

• Direct ownership of a product line at a company small enough that your decisions ship
• Equity in an early-stage company building foundational infrastructure for brain modelling
• A team of neuroscientists and engineers doing genuinely novel work
• Central London lab, on-site, with access to the Sussex rodent facility