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Avidbots is seeking an experienced Senior Product Manager to own the product roadmap for its autonomous cleaning robot platforms—Neo, Neo 2W, and Kas—which operate in airports, warehouses, hospitals, factories, and schools across five continents for customers including UPS, DHL, CVG Airport, and Toyota.
You will report directly to the VP Product and work cross-functionally with Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Customer Success, and Sales. This is a senior individual contributor role at the center of the company, requiring someone comfortable saying no when needed, reading warranty reports as carefully as customer interviews, and having shipped physical products to real customers.
Key responsibilities include:
**Own the Platform Roadmap**: Publish and maintain a multi-quarter roadmap for all three platforms with clear sequencing, trade-offs, and rationale. Collaborate with engineering management on release planning and escalation. Maintain a single prioritized backlog balancing new capability, cost reduction, reliability, and serviceability. Partner with VP Product on 2–3 year platform strategy and translate it into quarterly builds.
**Define What We Build**: Write clear, testable product requirements for Engineering. Run discovery with facility managers, cleaning contractors, BSC operators, and channel partners. Turn field data, customer feedback, command center data, service escalations, and warranty claims into prioritized decisions. Define acceptance criteria for machines running unattended around people.
**Support Early Product Explorations**: Work with Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Quality through new product introduction (NPI)—DFM reviews, pilot builds, validation, and ramp. Define commercial readiness: positioning, pricing, SKU structure, ROI story, sales enablement, and service documentation. Partner with Customer Success and Field Service on deployment readiness, spares strategy, and serviceability before launch. Run launch and post-launch reviews.
**Own the Outcomes**: Define and track metrics for each platform; present alongside roadmap in quarterly reviews. Build business cases for major investments with numbers, not enthusiasm. Act as escalation point for platform product questions from Sales, Customer Success, and worldwide channel partners. Support Sales on strategic accounts and RFPs.
Travel approximately 20–25% to customer sites. This role is on-site in the Waterloo Region with engineering and manufacturing teams.
**Requirements**
Required:
- 5+ years in product management, with at least 3 years owning a physical product (robotics, industrial equipment, vehicles, medical devices, or comparable hardware with embedded software stack)
- Direct experience with a deployed installed base; you have owned a product after launch, lived with its failure modes, and made roadmap decisions based on field feedback
- Technical fluency sufficient to hold your own with mechanical, electrical, embedded, and software engineers, and to make credible feasibility calls (production coding not required)
- Demonstrated ownership of the commercial side: pricing inputs, positioning, SKU structure, business cases, and sales enablement
- Strong written communication; you will write requirements, roadmaps, and business cases that people act on without follow-up meetings
- Comfortable making decisions with incomplete data and being accountable for them
- Willing to travel approximately 20–25% to customer sites
- Based in or willing to relocate to the Waterloo Region; this role is on-site
Preferred:
- Experience with autonomous mobile robots, AGVs/AMRs, AVs, or other autonomy-enabled physical products
- Experience with hardware products sold alongside recurring software or service contracts
- Background in B2B products sold to facilities, operations, logistics, or industrial buyers
- Experience with channel or distribution sales models in addition to direct
- Proven track record taking hardware through NPI to volume production (DFM reviews, pilot builds, ramp)
- Engineering degree or engineering background earlier in career
- Familiarity with safety and compliance regimes for mobile machinery operating around people
- Strong working knowledge of AI tools (Claude, Cowork/Code) and interest in AI for product management use cases
