Product Manager, Perception and Navigation

Apptronik Apptronik · Robotics · HQ · Product

Product Manager for Perception and Navigation at a human-centered robotics company developing AI-powered robots. The role focuses on driving the product vision, managing the perception and navigation software roadmap, defining technical requirements, setting evaluation metrics, owning data pipelines, and ensuring safety for embodied AI systems.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own and maintain the perception and navigation software roadmap: scope, sequencing, and feature priorities across detection, tracking, localization, mapping, and obstacle avoidance.
  2. Drive the technical definition of the perception stack, turning sensor inputs into the scene understanding and world state that the autonomy and model layers rely on.
  3. Define evaluation metrics and field-testing regimes for perception and navigation: detection, tracking, localization, and mapping accuracy, latency budgets, and the success and regression criteria that gate releases.
  4. Own the requirements for perception data pipelines including collection, labeling, and the feedback loop from field deployments.
  5. Lead product requirements for safe perception: reason through failure modes, validation coverage, and autonomy risk.

Skills

Required

  • 7+ years of experience in product management
  • Strong experience in perception and navigation fundamentals: detection, tracking, localization, mapping, and obstacle avoidance.
  • Demonstrated experience defining evaluation metrics, field-testing regimes, and performance tracking for autonomy or perception software.
  • Field deployment experience taking perception or autonomy software from the lab into reliable real-world operation.
  • Practical safety judgment around failure modes, validation coverage, and autonomy risks.
  • Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, enabling translation of technical insights into business impact.
  • Experience with autonomous robots or autonomous vehicles.
  • Experience with perception or autonomy evaluation frameworks and large-scale field-test data analysis.
  • Experience with robotics and functional safety standards (ISO 10218, ISO/TS 15066, ISO 13482, RIA 15.08).

Nice to have

  • Experience generating or using synthetic and simulation-generated data for perception.
  • Experience with data collection operations (teleoperation fleets, annotation and curation pipelines).
  • Experience with customers in light and heavy duty industrial environments.

What the JD emphasized

  • 7+ years of experience
  • Strong experience in perception and navigation fundamentals
  • Demonstrated experience defining evaluation metrics, field-testing regimes, and performance tracking for autonomy or perception software
  • Field deployment experience taking perception or autonomy software from the lab into reliable real-world operation
  • Practical safety judgment around failure modes, validation coverage, and autonomy risks

Other signals

  • driving product vision
  • translating market demands into roadmaps
  • defining evaluation metrics for perception and navigation
  • owning requirements for perception data pipelines
  • leading product requirements for safe perception