Senior Product Manager

Atoms; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 176,000 - 242,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision, Disability, &

Equity

401(k)

Paid time off

Team lunches

Job summary

Atoms in San Francisco is seeking a Senior Product Manager to own the operator and in-vehicle experience across our autonomous platforms. You will shape how the system communicates state and intent, how control is transferred, and how faults are presented to operators.

You will partner with engineering, safety, hardware, and field operations; conduct field research with operators and supervisors; define requirements, roadmaps, success metrics, and intake processes.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in product management or equivalent experience.
• Experience owning human-facing products in production.
• Experience in domains with HMI for physical/digital surfaces (industrial/automotive).
• Ability to work onsite five days a week in San Francisco and travel internationally.

Responsibilities

• In-Vehicle Experience: Own the state, intent, and fault presentation to the operator.
• Operator Experience: Own the experience of people around autonomous machines and controls.
• Safety-Critical Interaction: Define commands, confirmations, degraded states, and stop behavior with safety and engineering.
• Human Factors and Validation: Define validation methods and collect evidence for safety reviews.
• Physical and Digital Surfaces: Own software interfaces and hardware controls, displays, indicators.
• Training and Adoption: Partner with training/field operations to minimize required training.
• Requirements and Prioritization: Write PRDs, maintain roadmap, define success metrics, manage intake/prioritization.
• Field Research: Conduct on-site research with operators and supervisors; translate findings into decisions.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Collaborate with engineering, safety, hardware, field ops, and deployments.

Skills

End-to-end ownership

Human-machine interface

Cross-functional leadership

Strong written communication

Safety-critical systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in technical/design/human factors or related field

Job description

Atoms is building the machines that power the next era of progress.

Over the last decade, software has transformed the digital world. But the physical world, where food is made, minerals are mined, goods are moved, and industries are run, remains far less intelligent, far less efficient, and far more constrained. We’re changing that.

Atoms builds Physical AI— real-world robots for the industries that move civilization forward, starting with food, mining, and transport. Our systems are designed to understand, predict, and control the real world with precision, turning complex physical operations into something more reliable, more scalable, and more productive.

This work requires more than robotics. It requires deep integration across hardware, software, AI, operations, manufacturing, and real estate. We don’t just build machines in a lab. We deploy them into real environments, operate them, learn from them, and improve them until they work at scale.

We are roboticists, engineers, operators, and builders. We believe the next great technology companies will not only transform information, but the physical systems that shape everyday life.

If you want to work on hard problems with real-world impact, join us.

About the role

We are seeking a Senior Product Manager to own the operator and in-vehicle experience across our autonomous platforms. In this role, you will own what a person sees, hears, and does around a machine that drives itself, developing how the system communicates its state and intent and how a fault reaches the person who needs to act on it.

What you’ll do

• In-Vehicle Experience: Own what the person in the vehicle sees and does while the system is driving, including how the vehicle communicates state, intent, and confidence, how control is transferred in both directions, and how faults and degraded modes are presented.
• Operator Experience: Own the experience of the people working around our autonomous machines, including the operators of manned equipment sharing the same site, supervisors directing the operation, and the in-cab and handheld controls they use.
• Safety-Critical Interaction: Define requirements for commands, confirmations, degraded states, stop behavior, and lockout together with safety and engineering, to a standard where system state is unambiguous to the person acting on it.
• Human Factors and Validation: Define how these experiences are validated with real operators, including comprehension, response time, and error rate under working conditions, and produce the evidence required for internal safety review.
• Physical and Digital Surfaces: Own requirements across both software interfaces and the physical controls, displays, and indicators they run on, and partner with hardware and industrial design on their selection and placement.
• Training and Adoption: Partner with training and field operations on how operators learn the system, and use what surfaces there to reduce the amount of training the product requires.
• Requirements and Prioritization: Write product requirements, maintain the roadmap, and run delivery with engineering. Define success metrics per capability and report against them. Own intake and prioritization of requests from customers, field teams, and internal stakeholders.
• Field Research: Conduct primary research with equipment operators, vehicle operators, and supervisors, on site, and translate findings into product decisions.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner with engineering, autonomy, safety, hardware, field engineering and deployment operations, and training, and represent these products to customers.

What we’re looking for

• Bachelor's degree in a technical, design, human factors, or related field is required, with 3+ years in product management. Equivalent experience will be considered in place of the degree.
• Demonstrated end-to-end ownership of a human-facing product in production, from requirements through release and measured adoption.
• Experience owning human-machine interface products, in automotive, aviation, heavy equipment, industrial controls, medical devices, or a comparable domain.
• Experience designing for constrained operating conditions such as heavy vibration, glare, limited connectivity, etc.
• Demonstrated human factors practice, including usability testing with the actual user population and measurement of comprehension and response rather than preference.
• Experience working directly with industrial design, hardware engineering, and safety engineering on products with both physical and digital surfaces.
• Demonstrated ability to establish and hold a product or design direction across teams outside your reporting line.
• Strong written communication across product requirements, interaction specifications, and decision records.
• Experience delivering in environments where the product, the underlying autonomy system, and the customer's operation are concurrently in development.
• Ability to work onsite five days a week in San Francisco, and to travel regularly to customer sites, including internationally. Site work requires personal protective equipment and site-specific safety induction.

What else you need to know

This role is based in our San Franciscooffice. Atoms is a company driven by invention and continuous change - we are constantly reimagining our industries, building new products, and refining how we operate. We do our best work together. That’s why all of our office-based teams work onsite, five days a week.

The base salary range for this role is $176,000 - $242,000 per year.

Actual compensation will be determined on an individual basis and may vary depending on experience, skills, and qualifications.

Base salary is just one part of your total rewards package. You may also be eligible for equity awards.

Benefits Summary (USA Full-Time Exempt Employees)

• Medical, Dental, Vision, Disability, and Life Insurance
• Flexible Spending Account / Health Savings Account Options
• 401(k)
• Equity
• Sick Time, Unlimited Flexible Time Off, and Paid Holidays
• Team lunch in our SoMa office every Tuesday and Thursday

Benefits are subject to change at the company's discretion.
Atoms accepts applications on an ongoing basis.

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Ready to join us as we serve those who serve others?