Product Lead: Perception & Navigation for Autonomous Robots

Apptronik; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Apptronik in Austin, TX, seeks a Product Manager for Perception and Navigation to drive the vision across the hardware/software divide. You will translate market demands into executable roadmaps, coordinating with engineering, UX, and design to deliver customer value.

Lead metrics, field tests, and data pipelines for perception, ensuring safe, scalable, and impactful autonomy. Strong communication and decision-making in uncertain conditions are essential.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in product management for robotics or autonomy domains.
• Strong experience in perception and navigation fundamentals: detection, tracking, localization, mapping, obstacle avoidance.
• Experience defining evaluation metrics, field-testing regimes, and performance tracking for autonomy or perception software.
• Field deployment experience taking perception or autonomy software from the lab into reliable real-world operation.
• Practical safety judgment around failure modes, validation coverage, and autonomy risks.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, enabling translation of technical insights into business impact.
• Ability to make decisions in uncertainty, prioritizing velocity over perfection.
• Ability to prioritize user feedback, promoting and advocating for that voice to internal teams.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain the perception and navigation software roadmap: scope, sequencing, and feature priorities across detection, tracking, localization, mapping, and obstacle avoidance.
• Drive the technical definition of the perception stack, turning sensor inputs into the scene understanding and world state that the autonomy and model layers rely on.
• Define evaluation metrics and field-testing regimes for perception and navigation: detection, tracking, localization, and mapping accuracy, latency budgets, and the success and regression criteria that gate releases.
• Own the requirements for perception data pipelines including collection, labeling, and the feedback loop from field deployments.
• Lead product requirements for safe perception: reason through failure modes, validation coverage, and autonomy risk.
• Co-design within the compute envelope: account for edge deployment constraints, latency, and on-robot performance, partnering closely with the sensing and compute team.
• 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

Years of experience

Perception fundamentals

Evaluation metrics

Field deployment

Safety judgment

Communication skills

Decision making under uncertainty

User feedback advocacy

Education

PM experience 7+ years

Job description

Apptronik in Austin, TX, seeks a Product Manager for Perception and Navigation to drive the vision across the hardware/software divide. You will translate market demands into executable roadmaps, coordinating with engineering, UX, and design to deliver customer value.

Lead metrics, field tests, and data pipelines for perception, ensuring safe, scalable, and impactful autonomy. Strong communication and decision-making in uncertain conditions are essential.