Hardware Product Manager

Who we hire

Most of what we do has not been done before. The people who do well here have built something first of its kind, solved a problem others gave up on, or have patents, publications, or shipped products they can point to. They hold a high standard for their own work and expect it from the people around them.

We are hiring our first Hardware Product Manager to turn our technology into a component that other companies can design into their products.

Today every customer integration depends on direct engineering support. This role owns the product definition and the documents behind it: the datasheet, the reference designs, the evaluation kit, and the price-volume structure.

Most of the product line does not exist yet. You will define it and help build it. This is a hands-on role: expect to be at the bench assembling and testing evaluation hardware as often as you are in front of customers.

• Product specification. Take the datasheet from typical values to guaranteed minimum and maximum limits across temperature, illumination, and operating life, working with test and engineering to establish the data behind each committed parameter.
• Evaluation kit and reference designs. Define the contents, intended applications, and first-hour experience of our evaluation hardware, build and bring up early versions yourself, and manage the designs through EVT, DVT, and PVT.
• Prototyping, vendors, and test. Assemble and instrument prototypes and run the bench and environmental measurements behind the specification. Work with our international manufacturing and component vendors to produce prototype and production units, and validate that what arrives matches what was specified.
• Pricing structure. Build and maintain the price-volume curve with manufacturing, finance, and commercial, in a form a customer's purchasing organization can transact against.
• Product line and roadmap. Translate requirements from our beachhead segments into a defined set of SKUs with clear positioning, form factors, and electrical envelopes, and maintain the phase gates, BOM lock dates, and launch schedules behind them.
• Design-in support. Work with field applications and commercial on customer evaluation and validation builds, and fold the findings back into the specification and reference designs.
• Technical content. Application notes, integration guides, and selector guides that give a customer engineer enough confidence to specify our parts.
• Qualification planning. Determine which certifications each segment and geography requires, and sequence them ahead of customer demand.

• Seven or more years in hardware product management, applications engineering, or product marketing engineering for a component, module, or semiconductor product sold to OEMs.
• Hands-on bench capability. You can solder, assemble a prototype, bring up a board, and take the measurements yourself with a DMM, oscilloscope, source meter, and electronic load. This is a working role rather than a coordinating one.
• Direct accountability for a released datasheet, including establishing guaranteed specifications and understanding what it costs to guarantee them.
• Working knowledge of power and low-power systems: energy harvesting, MPPT, DC-DC conversion, battery charging and protection, and system-level power budgeting.
• Experience taking a product through EVT, DVT, and PVT with contract manufacturers, including international vendors, and an understanding of how OEM customers select, qualify, second-source, and ramp a part.
• Working with international vendors to produce and validate hardware: specifying what you need across a time zone and a language barrier, and confirming that what arrives meets it.
• Familiarity with cost modeling, margin structure, and volume-based pricing.
• Strong technical writing. Specifications, application notes, and integration guides are a significant portion of the role.
• BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

• PCB design: schematic capture and layout in KiCad or Altium.
• Firmware literacy: bringing up a development board and instrumenting a…