Senior Product Manager

Apera is an innovative, Vancouver-based company at the forefront of robotics, AI, and machine vision — recognized with the 2025 Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation Leadership Award and the 2024 BC Tech "Company of the Year, Growth" award. We're on a mission to redefine AI-driven robotic vision.

Apera AI helps manufacturers make their factories more flexible and productive. Robots enhanced with Apera's software have 4D Vision — the ability to see and grasp objects with human-like capability. Challenging applications such as bin picking, sorting, packaging, and assembly are now open to fast, precise, and reliable automation. We work with the world's leading automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers.

Our portfolio spans Vue (our 4D Vision software), Forge (a no-code simulation and AI training studio where customers build, validate, and de-risk robotic cells before any hardware is bought), and VuePod, our new turnkey, productized bin-picking cell.

The Role

We're looking for a Senior Product Manager to lead our product development function. This is a high-ownership role: you'll set the vision, strategy, and roadmap across our portfolio, from the Vue software platform to productized cells like VuePod, and act as the connective tissue between engineering, sales, marketing, and our customers. Reporting into engineering leadership, you'll turn deep customer understanding and competitive insight into the priorities that shape what we build, and make sure the business is equipped to win with it.

You'll work at the interface between a world-class engineering and applied-science team and our commercial team, on a technically rich product, with the latitude to define how product is practiced here as we grow.

What You'll Do

• Own the product vision and strategy. Vision-guided robotics has historically been sold as an engineering project — a robot, a camera, an integrator, and weeks of on-site tuning. We're changing that by making it a product. You'll own the strategy and roadmap that carries this across the portfolio, from Vue to turnkey VuePod cells, deciding where we invest between new capability, deployment reliability, and ease of use.
• Be the voice of the customer. Our users are manufacturing engineers, controls engineers, and operators on plant floors, not software teams. You'll spend time in plants and integrator shops, understand why a vision-guided cell wins or stalls at an automotive OEM or Tier 1 supplier, and turn pain points into requirements our R&D teams can build against.
• Bridge product and the business. Automation is bought through a chain: robot OEMs, integrators, and end customers each need a different story. You'll sit between the product team and the commercial team as the translator both trust, turning field signals into roadmap priorities, shaping positioning and messaging, and arming the commercial team to expand sales.
• Shape the physical product. Our products live in the physical world: VuePort cameras, the VueController, and complete VuePod cells with enclosures, compute, and gripper interfaces. You'll define hardware requirements and the business case behind them, weigh cost, supply chain, and manufacturability trade-offs with engineering and our manufacturing partners, and shape the hardware lineup that supports both Vue deployments and turnkey cells.
• Raise the bar on quality and experience. The difference between a demo and a product is what happens in week 30 on night shift. You'll pressure-test features against how operators and maintenance teams actually work, drive toward customers going from purchase to first pick on their own, and own the documentation and training content that lets them succeed long after commissioning.
• Drive how we package, price, and launch. We sell software licenses, camera hardware, simulation seats in Forge, and complete cells, into buyers who think in CapEx, payback periods, and cost per pick. You'll decide how we package and price across that mix, protect margin as we scale from projects to products, and lead launches across both the platform and our productized offerings.
• Define what's next. You'll track the state of the art in AI and machine vision, decide which capabilities belong in the product, and turn them into solutions for problems that were out of reach a year ago. Imagine products that don't exist yet, then ground that vision in what's working in the field.

What You Bring

• 5+ years in product management with physical products: robotics, industrial automation, machine vision, or other hardware-and-software systems.
• A track record of owning complex technical products from requirements through launch, and enough technical depth to earn the trust of engineers and applied scientists in roadmap debates.
• Experience turning market needs and business strategy into roadmaps, including early-access programs and coordinated handoffs to marketing and sales.
• Experience with, or a demonstrated appetite for, pricing, packaging, and business-case ownership across hardware and software offerings.
• Comfortable in front of customers, from executive briefings to plant floors, and willing to travel to see the product where it lives.
• Strong analytical instincts and fluency with data to inform decisions and measure whether what shipped is working.

Why Apera?

• Purpose with impact: You're not building for someday. You're shaping a product that's improving production on real factory floors right now.
• High ownership: You'll define how product is practiced at Apera as we grow, across both software and physical product.
• What do you get: 
  • The salary range for this role is $150,000–$190,000 per year. Final compensation will be based on experience, skills, and qualifications, as well as internal equity and market alignment, to ensure a competitive and fair offer.
  • Generous stock option program
  • Company paid extended health, and dental coverage
  • Career growth in a fast-growing AI and robotics company
  • Exposure to global manufacturing leaders and innovative customer projects
  • Growth at the edge: Rare, end-to-end exposure to AI, machine vision, hardware, and go-to-market — all in one role.

At Apera AI, you'll turn robotics, AI breakthroughs, software and hardware alike into products that win on the plant floor.