Lead Product Manager – Autonomous Robotics

Apptronik; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 215,000 - 245,000; Full time

Job summary

Apptronik, a robotics innovator in Sunnyvale, seeks a senior product leader to drive the AI model roadmap for Apollo. You will align hardware and software stacks, translating market demands into executable roadmaps and feature requirements for the autonomy stack.

You will collaborate across data, engineering, and design teams to ensure that model capability releases deliver real customer value while maintaining reliability, safety, and scaling for hardware products.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in product management.
• Strong understanding of modern robot learning techniques including imitation learning, reinforcement learning.
• Demonstrated experience integrating, adapting, or fine-tuning models.
• Strong familiarity with the constraints of running large neural networks on physical edge devices.
• Strong analytical skills with experience in performance tracking and data-driven decision-making.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, enabling translation of technical insights into business impact.
• You make decisions in uncertainty, prioritizing velocity over perfection.
• You prioritize user feedback, promoting and advocating for that voice to internal teams.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain the physical AI model roadmap: product vision, milestones, and release cycles for the core model stack.
• Drive the integration, adaptation, and fine-tuning of foundation models into Apollo's autonomy stack. Sequence which capabilities graduate into the shipping model, balancing capability velocity against reliability and safety.
• Translate customer use cases into model capability requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Partner with our data collection and evaluation team on benchmarks, real-world evaluation, and the success criteria that gate real-world deployment.
• Own the data strategy that feeds model development: define what to collect and why, the target tasks and behaviors, and the quality bar.
• Align data technology and operations teams on collection techniques, tooling, and quality expectations.
• Define and prioritize use cases based on business impact, feasibility, and customer needs.
• Ensure that product development efforts align with real-world economic value for customers.
• Synthesize insights from user research, customer meetings, usage data, and sales feedback into a strategy that delivers business objectives and customer benefits.
• Work with industrial design, user experience, and engineering teams to conceptualize and implement interactive features.
• Define product features/enhancements and communicate requirements to engineering teams via clearly written requirements documents, diagrams, and concise verbal communication.
• Support product marketing initiatives, partner relationships, and other opportunities to accelerate the adoption of our products.

Skills

Product management

Robot learning

Model integration

Data-driven decisions

Communication

Decision making under uncertainty

User feedback advocacy

Education

Bachelor's degree in mechanical, electrical, systems, or robotics engineering

MBA helpful

Job description

Apptronik, a robotics innovator in Sunnyvale, seeks a senior product leader to drive the AI model roadmap for Apollo. You will align hardware and software stacks, translating market demands into executable roadmaps and feature requirements for the autonomy stack.

You will collaborate across data, engineering, and design teams to ensure that model capability releases deliver real customer value while maintaining reliability, safety, and scaling for hardware products.