Direct Placement Role: Principal/Senior Product Manager (with the opportunity to grow rapidly with the company) Focus Area: Manufacturing Inspection, Quality Control, and Critical Infrastructure Monitoring Compensation: Up to $180k - plus benefits, commensurate with experience Location: Los Altos, CA (preferred) or Remote Company Description: Our client is a pioneering startup, harnessing bleeding-edge technology to transform industries. Backed by Silicon Valley's top venture capital firms. Our clients' latest funding round in December 2024 was led by Menlo Ventures, with additional support from notable global investors such as Accel and FEBE and other highly respected names in the industry. Our client is driving innovation in AI-powered computer vision solutions that revolutionize manufacturing inspection, quality control, and critical infrastructure monitoring. With a blue-chip customer base and an accomplished founding team, they are redefining operational efficiency and quality standards. Position Description: We’re seeking a customer-centric, detail-oriented Principal or Senior Product Manager to define and execute the product roadmap for our clients’ AI-powered inspection, quality control, and critical infrastructure monitoring solutions. The ideal candidate will have a strong sense of UI/UX best practices, blending strategic thinking with a deep understanding of customers’ operational challenges. You will work closely with engineering, design, sales, and executive leadership to create products that deliver exceptional user experiences and address real-world pain points. This is not just a product management role—it’s a leadership position that places you at the forefront of innovation and business growth. With the company poised for rapid expansion, you’ll have the opportunity to influence high-level strategy, mentor junior team members, and quickly advance to even more senior leadership responsibilities as we scale. Responsibilities: + Market & Customer Research: Immerse yourself in the workflows and challenges of manufacturing inspection, quality control, and infrastructure monitoring to identify unmet customer needs. Maintain a customer-centric approach, gathering continuous feedback and leveraging user research to guide product decisions. Analyze market trends, competitive landscapes, and emerging technologies, user centric improvements to enhance the overall product experience. + Product Strategy & Roadmap: Develop, refine, and maintain a product roadmap aligned with company objectives, customer requirements, and best-in-class UI/UX standards. Prioritize features and initiatives based on customer feedback, user experience impact, ROI potential, and alignment with Akridata’s strategic vision. + Requirements Definition & Execution: Translate customer insights, user experience research, and sales feedback into detailed product requirements, user stories, and design specifications. Work with engineering teams to ensure timely, high-quality product delivery, balancing technical feasibility with an exceptional user experience. + Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with the sales team to understand customer pain points, support deal strategies, and ensure product messaging resonates with target audiences. Collaborate with marketing to craft compelling product positioning, value propositions, and launch materials that highlights problems we solve and customer benefits. Align with executive leadership to ensure product decisions advance broader organizational goals and market positioning. + Customer Engagement & Feedback Loop: Engage directly with customers—factory heads, quality managers, and vision engineers to validate product hypotheses, gather detailed feedback, and iterate quickly. Champion the voice of the customer, ensuring that each product enhancement solves a real problem, improves usability, and drives quantifiable value. + Product Launch & Lifecycle Management: Oversee product releases, working with stakeholders to ensure seamless rollouts, effective internal training, and engaging marketing campaigns. Continuously measure product performance using KPIs and analytics, identifying opportunities for optimization, UI/UX enhancements, and expansion. Qualifications: + 5+ years of product management experience in a B2B technology environment, ideally with a focus on manufacturing, automation, computer vision, or AI solutions. + Proven ability to create detailed product requirements that translate complex customer needs into successful, user-friendly product solutions. + Demonstrated expertise in UI/UX principles, ensuring products deliver a seamless, intuitive, and impactful user experience. + Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and analytical skills, with a customer-centric and detail-oriented mindset. + Strong understanding of manufacturing processes, quality control workflows, or infrastructure monitoring scenarios. Preferred Qualifications: + Familiarity with technologies from Cognex, Keyence, Omron, or similar industrial automation platforms and computer vision systems. + Experience working with AI-driven solutions for automating inspection stations, reducing defect rates, and enhancing quality assurance processes. + History of successful product launches and lifecycle management in a startup or high-growth environment. Education & Certifications: + Bachelor’s degree required; technical or engineering background is a plus. Benefits: + 401K + Medical / Dental / Vision Equal Opportunity Statement: RCM is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran. Pay Transparency: RCM believes in transparency and fairness in compensation. We are committed to providing our employees with competitive salaries that reflect their skills, experience, and contributions to our organization. As part of our commitment to pay transparency, we want to provide you with as much information as possible about our compensation practices. Disclaimer: This job posting is intended to describe the general nature and the level of the work to be performed. It is not intended to include every job duty and responsibility specific to the position. RCM reserves the right to amend and change responsibilities to meet business and organizational needs as necessary. About RCM: RCM is a leading provider of Business, IT, and Engineering Services to over 1,000 clients in the commercial marketplace. RCM partners with clients to define, implement and manage a broad range of technologies across multiple platforms, systems, and networks. Our broad geographic presence ensures that a proven and reliable tactical and strategic capability is available and deployable virtually everywhere in North America.