Staff Product Manager, Applied AI

Apptronik Apptronik · Robotics · HQ · Product

Staff Product Manager, Applied AI at Apptronik, a human-centered robotics company. The role focuses on driving the product vision and roadmap for AI-powered robots, specifically integrating, adapting, and fine-tuning foundation models into the robot's autonomy stack. Responsibilities include owning the AI model roadmap, defining data strategy, translating customer needs into model requirements, and ensuring alignment with business objectives and customer benefits. Experience with modern robot learning techniques and integrating/adapting models is required.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own and maintain the physical AI model roadmap: product vision, milestones, and release cycles for the core model stack
  2. Drive the integration, adaptation, and fine-tuning of foundation models into Apollo's autonomy stack. Sequence which capabilities graduate into the shipping model, balancing capability velocity against reliability and safety.
  3. Translate customer use cases into model capability requirements and acceptance criteria
  4. Partner with our data collection and evaluation team on benchmarks, real-world evaluation, and the success criteria that gate real-world deployment.
  5. Own the data strategy that feeds model development: define what to collect and why, the target tasks and behaviors, and the quality bar.

Skills

Required

  • 7+ years of experience in product management
  • Strong understanding of modern robot learning techniques including imitation learning, reinforcement learning
  • Demonstrated experience integrating, adapting, or fine-tuning models
  • Strong familiarity with the constraints of running large neural networks on physical edge devices
  • Strong analytical skills with experience in performance tracking and data-driven decision-making.
  • Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, enabling translation of technical insights into business impact.
  • You make decisions in uncertainty, prioritizing velocity over perfection
  • You prioritize user feedback, promoting and advocating for that voice to internal teams.

Nice to have

  • Experience with autonomous robots or autonomous vehicles.
  • Experience using simulation tools to improve user experience.
  • Hands-on experience training or fine-tuning foundation
  • Experience with data collection operation (teleoperation fleets, annotation and curation pipelines).
  • Experience working with customers in light and heavy duty industrial environments
  • Experience with robotics and functional safety standards (ISO 10218, ISO/TS 15066, ISO 13482, RIA 15.08).

What the JD emphasized

  • integrating, adapting, or fine-tuning models
  • modern robot learning techniques including imitation learning, reinforcement learning
  • shipping complex hardware products

Other signals

  • driving product vision
  • integrating foundation models
  • adapting and fine-tuning models
  • translating customer use cases into model requirements
  • owning data strategy for model development
  • defining and prioritizing use cases
  • shipping complex hardware products