The Role
Lead and grow the product management organization for humanoid robots, define long-term product strategy and roadmap, translate requirements into executable plans with engineering, oversee end-to-end product lifecycle across software, controls, and hardware, track success metrics, drive data-informed iteration, and collaborate cross-functionally to bring products to market. Role requires international travel to customer sites.
Summary Generated by Built In
Your New Role and Team
Sanctuary AI, a world leader in building AI-based control systems for humanoid robots, is looking for a Director of Product Management to join our team. This role will lead the product management organization and help shape how our products evolve from early concept to real-world deployment. We are looking for a leader who understands the realities of advanced robotics, automation, and intelligent systems, and who can bring clarity, structure, and direction to a fast-moving engineering environment.
Our Success Criteria
- Partner with leadership to define and execute a long term product strategy and roadmap
- Lead, mentor, and support our product management organization, building a high performance and accountable culture
- Bring structure to ambiguity and create clear processes that help cross functional teams move quickly
- Work closely with engineering, research, and operations to translate requirements into actionable plans
- Communicate product vision, priorities, and progress to senior stakeholders
- Oversee the end to end product lifecycle, ensuring alignment between product decisions and engineering feasibility
- Collaborate deeply with development teams to understand constraints, tradeoffs, and technical direction
- Ensure products meet performance expectations across software, controls, mechanical systems, and user experience
- Define and track key metrics that measure product success and guide iteration
- Drive continuous improvement through data, market insight, and customer feedback
- Work cross functionally with engineering, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and customer success teams to bring products to market
- The role involves international travel, including to U.S. customer locations, and candidates must be able to fulfill these travel obligations without limitation.
Experience and Qualifications
- Degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience in technology development
- A minimum of 7 plus years leading cross functional teams building intelligent hardware systems such as humanoid robots, industrial automation systems, automated machinery, or sensor driven platforms
- Must have strong exposure to embedded machine learning, real time AI systems, or intelligent control software
- Solid understanding of product development processes and the ability to collaborate closely with engineering development teams
- Direct industry experience in robotics, industrial automation, or automated machinery is required
- Hands on knowledge of manufacturing considerations, including build readiness, production constraints, and scaling challenges
- Strong leadership ability with experience guiding teams toward clear strategic goals
- Excellent communication and negotiation skills, able to work with technical and non technical partners
- Strategic mindset with strong analytical problem solving capabilities
Skills
- Deep understanding of how complex mechatronic or robotic systems are developed, validated, and scaled
- Ability to partner closely with engineering teams across software, AI, controls, and hardware
- Strong technical fluency and the ability to translate between engineering detail and business direction
- Ability to define product strategy in environments with high ambiguity and rapid iteration
- Innovative mindset with an applied research orientation
- Strong collaboration abilities, influencing without authority, and aligning diverse stakeholders
Traits
- Positive attitude and willingness to do whatever is required to move the mission forward
- Empathetic listener who can navigate conflict with clarity
- Bias for action, communication, and proactive leadership
- Self driven and comfortable solving problems independently
- Mission oriented and passionate about bringing human like intelligence to machines
Skills Required
- Degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Engineering, AI/ML, or related technical field, or equivalent experience
- Minimum of 7+ years leading cross-functional teams building intelligent hardware systems (humanoid robots, industrial automation, sensor-driven platforms)
- Direct industry experience in robotics, industrial automation, or automated machinery
- Strong exposure to embedded machine learning, real-time AI systems, or intelligent control software
- Hands-on knowledge of manufacturing considerations including build readiness, production constraints, and scaling challenges
- Solid understanding of product development processes and ability to collaborate closely with engineering teams
- Proven leadership experience guiding teams toward clear strategic goals and building high-performance cultures
- Excellent communication and negotiation skills with technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Strategic mindset with strong analytical problem-solving capabilities
- Deep understanding of how complex mechatronic or robotic systems are developed, validated, and scaled
- Ability to travel internationally, including to U.S. customer locations, with no limitations
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The Company
What We Do
Sanctuary is on a mission to create the world’s first human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots that will help us work more safely, efficiently, and sustainably. And in the not-too-distant future, help us explore, settle, and prosper in outer space. Members of the Sanctuary team founded D-Wave (a pioneer in the quantum computing industry), Kindred (first use of reinforcement learning in a production robot), and the Creative Destruction Lab (pioneered a revolutionary method for the commercialization of science for the betterment of humankind). The team has experience launching market-defining innovations rooted in previously unsolved and deep scientific problems.
