Regional Business Development & Operations Lead - Lombardia

About Complete Robot
We are an early-stage, venture-backed company currently operating out of San Francisco, building AI-enabled systems for automated physical environments. The company works at the intersection of AI agents, connected devices, user experience, machine data, and real-world commercial operations. Complete Robot Inc. was founded by Tomasz Stańczak, founder of Nethermind. To learn more about the company, vision, and the technology we’re building, visit the Complete Robot website.

About the role
We are looking for a senior business development and operations lead in Italy, ideally based in Lombardia, with direct experience in vending, payments, coffee vending, convenience retail, retail automation, or adjacent industrial technology.

You will help develop the company's Italian commercial presence by building relationships, identifying pilot opportunities, supporting partner conversations, and helping turn early interest into structured commercial progress.

This role requires someone who is commercial, operational, and technical enough to have credible conversations with traditional retail, industrial, and machine-based businesses.

For candidates who can start immediately, there may be an opportunity to join the founding team in San Francisco for an intensive onboarding and company-building period at a prestigious accelerator. This may include staying with the team in the accelerator environment while working closely on early customer, product, and market-development work, subject to timing, availability, travel, immigration, and company approval.

This is an early role with significant growth potential for the right candidate.

Responsibilities

Own early business development for Italy, starting in Lombardia and nearby commercial regions.

Build relationships with operators, commercial partners, distributors, payment companies, retail automation businesses, and strategic location owners.

Identify pilot opportunities in vending, coffee vending, unattended retail, and related self-service environments.

Support commercial conversations, meetings, demos, and structured follow-up.

Work directly with the founder on Italian market development, customer feedback, and partner strategy.

Help position the company credibly with industrial and retail stakeholders.

Translate local market feedback into product, integration, and deployment requirements.

Support pilot planning, field coordination, demo logistics, and early customer success.

Help develop the first version of the Italian sales and operations playbook.

Build the foundation for a future local team across business development, operations, field deployment, and customer success.

Requirements

Direct experience in at least one of the following is required: vending machines, coffee vending or office coffee service, unattended retail, payments, POS, or merchant services, convenience retail, retail automation, self-service kiosks, automated food, beverage, or snack retail, industrial electronics or machine distribution related to retail automation.

Strong network in Italy, ideally Lombardia, across relevant operators, payment providers, retailers, distributors, or technology partners.

Italian fluency required.

Professional English required.

Ability to sell a new technology product to traditional industrial and retail stakeholders.

Ability to understand conversations around hardware, software, payments, service, inventory, and operator economics.

Willingness to travel across Lombardia, Northern Italy, and other relevant Italian markets.

Comfortable working in an early-stage startup with high autonomy and limited structure.

Strong follow-through and ability to turn relationships into concrete next steps.

Preferred experience

Experience working with Italian vending companies, coffee-machine companies, payment providers, or automated retail businesses.

Experience selling or deploying payment systems, telemetry systems, POS, retail automation, IoT hardware, or related technology.

Experience launching new products or partnerships with industrial, retail, or operator partners.

Experience with channel sales, distributors, operators, or franchise-style networks.

Experience building a…