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SandboxAQ is a high-growth AI company delivering Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) that address challenges in life sciences, financial services, navigation, cybersecurity, and other sectors. The company emerged from Alphabet Inc. in 2022 and is backed by leading growth investors.
The AI Simulation (AISim) division develops physics-grounded, chemistry-informed AI models to simulate molecular behavior and accelerate discovery across biopharma, chemicals, advanced materials, and healthcare. Within AISim, ChemSim is an AI-driven materials discovery platform.
You will own the Catalysis vertical as Principal Product Manager. This is a dual-mandate role: (1) Near-term, you are the product owner for catalysis within SandboxAQ's $500M CHIPS Act R&D award from the U.S. Department of Commerce, translating contractual objectives into product requirements and external fulfillment while partnering with Program Managers on milestone delivery. (2) In parallel, you will build the commercial foundation to transform catalysis from government-funded R&D into a product-led business generating recurring revenue from the broader materials and process-chemistry market.
Catalysis is one of the largest application areas in applied chemistry, underpinning refining, petrochemical production, emissions control, and the energy transition (hydrogen electrolysis, carbon utilization, e-fuels, chemical recycling). The market bottleneck is that catalyst discovery and optimization remain slow, experimental, and expensive. This role shapes a category-defining AI platform for materials science at the intersection of national security, scientific discovery, and commercial scale.
Key responsibilities include: owning end-to-end catalysis product strategy, vision, and roadmap spanning CHIPS Act deliverables, vertical scientific depth, and commercial expansion; building deep customer understanding through Application Scientists and Business Development; translating program objectives into product requirements and evidence packages for the Department of Commerce; defining dataset and model requirements for chemical coverage and fidelity; driving roadmap evolution from property prediction toward reaction-level modeling; quantifying customer value (yield, selectivity, catalyst life, energy efficiency, emissions) and equipping go-to-market teams with value propositions; contributing to commercial strategy (customer segmentation, packaging, pricing); building and managing strategic partner relationships (fabs, equipment OEMs, refiners, chemical producers, catalyst manufacturers, national labs); defining and tracking strategic KPIs (model accuracy, workflow adoption, customer expansion, revenue growth); developing build-vs-buy and build-vs-partner recommendations; serving as primary product voice for catalysis to stakeholders and customers; and defining which roadmap elements are shared capabilities versus market-specific.
The company is fully remote with flexible paid time off, company-wide seasonal breaks, and comprehensive benefits including medical, dental, vision, retirement matching, and paid parental leave.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 5+ years in product management, including ownership of technically deep products sold to external customers; must operate in software and service-oriented business models
- Strong domain grounding in materials science, catalysis, chemistry, or chemical engineering; sufficient knowledge to credibly engage computational scientists, validation partners, and domain SMEs
- Track record shipping AI/ML-driven scientific or engineering software to external, paying, or contracted users; shipping products where ICP was unclear and demand generation was not established
- Experience contributing to scope of offer, packaging, and pricing decisions for technical software, or clear evidence of commercial instinct
- Ability to engage both computational scientists and industrial, refining, chemical, or equipment OEM partners; translate partner requirements into product requirements
- Ability to reason commercially across multiple end markets, size opportunities, compare on evidence, and sequence entry strategically
- Comfort navigating deep ambiguity: translating unclear scientific and customer problems into structured roadmaps, success criteria, and measurable outcomes
- Ownership mindset and rigorous operational execution track record
- Bachelor's degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, or equivalent practical experience
HIGHLY DESIRED:
- Experience in major catalysis end markets: refining/downstream, petrochemicals/commodity chemicals, emissions control, or energy-transition catalysis (electrolysis, carbon utilization, e-fuels, chemical recycling)
- Familiarity with computational chemistry workflows (DFT, molecular dynamics, microkinetic modeling) and judgment to evaluate technical feasibility and roadmap trade-offs
- Semiconductor or electronic materials process chemistry experience (deposition, etch, wafer cleaning, gas abatement)
- Familiarity with homogeneous/solution-phase catalysis alongside heterogeneous surface chemistry
- Understanding of machine-learned interatomic potentials, spin polarization in transition-metal systems, and ML model evaluation against experimental or first-principles data
- Track record building product-led growth for technical/scientific software, including self-serve adoption and land-and-expand models
- Prior product or business development engagement with catalyst manufacturers, chemical producers, refiners, or semiconductor ecosystem partners
- Experience with multi-tenant SaaS, API governance, and enterprise security/compliance
- Advanced degree in Computational Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Catalysis, Materials Science, or related field
