Senior Product Manager

VoltForce; Oakland (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health insurance

Dental and Vision plans

401k matching

20 days PTO

Job summary

VoltForce is partnering with an early-stage materials-inspection company to search for a Senior Product Manager. The role focuses on owning the product experience for hardware and software used by process engineers, technicians, and quality managers.

You will map workflows, prototype interfaces, and collaborate with data science, ML teams, and the Head of Product on the roadmap. You will lead user experience design for a stand-alone and inline platform, ensuring clarity, reliability, and a

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, physical sciences, or engineering.
• 5–10 years in software product management or UX/product design, with at least 3 years owning a software product end to end.
• Hands-on UX and UI design ability with a portfolio produced and tested in Figma or equivalent.
• Strong track record of deep customer and user research in the field and translating observations into shipped product decisions.
• Ability to simplify complex products for non-expert users; experience with ML or analytics platform products.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end software product experience, designed for non-expert users needing clear answers.
• Prototype and test interface concepts with real users using Figma or equivalent.
• Collaborate with engineering, data science, and commercial teams to define product direction.
• Translate customer understanding into clear product definitions and feed into engineering requirements.
• Prioritize Jira tickets and facilitate planning with engineering and commercial teams.

Skills

UX design

User research

ML analytics

Jira

Agile

Education

BS or MS in HCI / ID / engineering

Tools

Jira

Job description

What You'll Do

Confidential client. Search led by VoltForce.

Location:

San Francisco Bay Area

About The Company

VoltForce is working with an early-stage materials-inspection company on the search for a Senior Product Manager. Our client helps manufacturers make and design better, safer, and more reliable micro- and nano-scale materials, the building blocks of critical sectors like energy storage, semiconductors, automotive, aerospace, and power systems. As demand surges and production grows more complex and faster, small undetected variations during manufacturing lead to waste, lower performance, higher cost, and safety risk, leaving manufacturers with little visibility into the quality of what they produce.

The company's platform changes that. It scans materials without damaging them, pairing a novel sensing approach with physics-informed machine learning to capture real-time signals that conventional methods cannot access. Those signals give manufacturers rare visibility into how materials behave as they are made.

The company turns that hidden data into actionable intelligence, helping manufacturers reduce variability and increase yield and product performance. The platform can run as a standalone tool or integrate directly into production lines, and it is already in early deployment with leading global manufacturers.

Role Overview

Our client is looking for a Senior Product Manager to own the product experience through which customers understand their materials. This is a customer-obsessed, hands-on product role. You will spend significant time in the field with process engineers, technicians, and quality managers, mapping their workflows in detail, understanding where the product creates value, and translating that understanding into a complete hardware and software experience that is intuitive, reliable, and genuinely delightful to use.

The software is how customers get their answers. Making it simple, clear, and sticky is the core of this role. You will lead the design of user workflows and interfaces, prototype and test them directly with users, and define the product experience across the standalone and inline offerings. You will work closely with engineering, data science, and commercial teams, and partner directly with the Head of Product on roadmap and product direction.

What You'll Do

Customer & User Understanding

• Spend substantial time in the field understanding how customers work: their processes, their pain points, and how the product fits into their day-to-day
• Map user workflows in detail across personas (technician, process engineer, quality manager), and distinguish stated needs from latent ones
• Build and maintain a deep, structured understanding of user needs that informs every product decision

Product Experience & Design

• Own the end-to-end software product experience, designed first for non-expert users who need clear, actionable answers without deep metrology, machine learning, or software training
• Use Figma or equivalent tools to personally prototype and test interface concepts and workflows with real users before involving engineering
• Systematically simplify: reduce the number of steps, parameters, and decisions a user faces, working with engineering to hide or automate complexity that should not be user-facing
• Define how measurement results and analytics are presented to each persona, communicating confidence and uncertainty in plain language

Product Definition & Collaboration

• Translate customer and user understanding into clear product definition and feed it into the requirements process owned by engineering through active collaboration
• Partner with data science and machine learning teams to shape how the analytics layer serves non-expert users, including reducing manual model training as a user-facing step
• Contribute customer and product insight to the roadmap and product direction led by the Head of Product
• Prioritize Jira tickets for product workstreams and facilitate planning with engineering and commercial teams

Required

What We’re Looking For

• BS or MS in Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, physical sciences, or engineering
• 5 to 10 years in software product management or UX/product design, with at least 3 years owning a software product experience end to end
• Hands-on UX and UI design ability: a portfolio of interface work you personally produced and tested in Figma or equivalent tools
• A track record of deep customer and user research, spending time in the field, mapping workflows, and translating observation into shipped product decisions
• Demonstrated ability to take complex or technical products and make them simple and intuitive for non-expert users
• Experience with ML or analytics platform products: presenting model outputs to non-expert users and managing features with non-deterministic behavior
• Proficiency with Jira and Agile practices

Preferred

• Experience designing software for industrial, scientific instrumentation, or non-destructive testing applications
• Background in or exposure to battery manufacturing, aerospace coatings, or semiconductor materials
• Experience with software deployed in industrial or manufacturing environments
• Willingness to travel to customer sites in North America, Europe, and Asia
• Prior experience at an early-stage deep-tech startup

Why This Role

• Be part of a team defining a new category in materials inspection
• Work on genuinely novel deep-tech technology at the intersection of advanced sensing, AI, and advanced materials
• Join an early-stage company where your decisions directly shape the product and the technology
• Contribute to a platform that reduces scrap, improves yields, and helps manufacturers build a cleaner world

Benefits

• Equity and salary based on experience
• Health, dental, and vision plans
• 401k matching
• 20 days PTO per year, plus paid US holidays

Our client is an equal opportunity employer.