Director of Software Product - Engineered Arts

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• Directeur des Produits Logiciels - Engineered Arts

About Engineered Arts

Engineered Arts is the leading manufacturer of full-size humanoid robots used for entertainment, education and communication. With 20 years of hardware and software development, our robots have been sold in over 30 countries worldwide with customers such as NASA, PwC, Meta and many more. 

Our Ameca robot is well known as ‘the face of AI’ and a social media viral success, taking advantage of the generative AI craze. Along with our ultra-realistic Mesmer range of animated figures our robots continue to surprise and excite visitors at museums, theme parks, visitor attractions and trade shows as well as aid leading universities with AI and robotics research. Our robots are poised to break into the future mega-expansion service robot segment, with applications such as front of house, receptions, check-in desks, information points and PoS. We are also exploring how our humanoid robot technology can disrupt other robotics sectors such as the growing cobot sub-segment of the industrial robotics market.

We are a team of dedicated engineers and creatives striving to develop the very best experiences for our customers. Our internal motto is ‘Be Wow’, everything we do is fun, entertaining or surprising to encounter. We always push the boundaries of what is possible in humanoid robotics, researching and developing new systems and techniques to further their appeal. We explore and challenge the human perception of robots as well as the fear and discomfort and the excitement and joy life-like mechanical humanoids present. 

Role Outline

Engineered Arts is seeking a dynamic and visionary Director of Software Product, a pivotal role that oversees not only our robot software and platforms, but also the robots OS and the features and functionality of them, the magic that makes them feel alive, and makes them feel human. As the Director of Software Product, you will collaborate horizontally across business teams to create product roadmaps, identify customer needs and help enhance their experience of the product, enable marketing and sales teams to go to market, and deliver features that enhance the products functionality and usability. Your strategic mindset and expertise in product lifecycle management will be instrumental in propelling the team toward innovation, ensuring seamless robot interactions, and maintaining our technological lead in the market. This role calls for strong leadership, excellent communication skills, and a proven track record in managing products that support complex ecosystems.

Main Responsibilities

1. Lead Strategy Development: Craft and execute a comprehensive top-level product strategy for the emerging applications for social humanoid robots.
2. Product Lifecycle Management: Oversee the entire product lifecycle from inception to sunset, ensuring that each phase is executed with precision and aligned with company objectives.
3. Drive Product Innovations: Identify and prioritize new features and integrations to keep our offerings competitive and meet the evolving needs of our customers and the market.
4. Cross-functional Leadership: Collaborate with engineering, marketing, sales, and support teams to ensure product success and seamless market introduction.
5. Team Management: Build and nurture a high-performing product team, fostering an environment of continuous learning and growth.
6. Market Analysis: Continuously analyze market trends, customer feedback, and competitive moves to inform product decisions and adaptations.
7. AI Native Product Leadership: Be an advocate for AI collaboration, helping teams and individuals with AI education and adoption 

Typical Position Interactions

Senior Management

• Understanding business vision and goals
• Defining L0 product roadmap and feature development priorities

Product team

• Coaching, mentoring and managing the Product Management team

Head of Software Engineering and Platform Architect

• Refining technical feature requirements and development backlog
• Reviewing feature development progress

Engineering teams

• Communicating the vision and goals for the product
• Gathering feedback and feature requests from our internal users who bring our robots to life

Sales team

• Understand how the market is evolving through commonly requested use-cases and requested abilities

Customers

• Understand the pain points and desired features from our current customer base

Challenges

• Make beautiful yet functional interfaces and exceptional and unique experiences for our customers and robot users
• Work with some of the most advanced webapps and humanoid robots in the world
• Collaborate across many teams to push products from concept to market
• Scaling product governance across increasingly complex AI systems.
• Balancing experimentation velocity with safety and compliance.
• Managing platform architecture coherence across expanding product use cases.
• Balance the needs of the business with the needs of our current and prospective customers

Qualifications, Knowledge, Key Skills and Experience

• 7-10 years of solid experience in product management or a similar domain.
• Bachelor of Science degree in computer science, engineering, or equivalent experience.
• Strong leadership skills and the ability to manage direct reports effectively.
• Working knowledge and experience of customer facing user interfaces, especially with hardware-software integrated ecosystems
• Excellent communications and partnering skills. Comfortable presenting to customers and internal stakeholders, across business and technical audiences
• Strong ability to break down very complex problems into actionable steps that drive results
• Experience with compliance-heavy or safety-sensitive products.
• Understanding of the power of AI tools in product development, promoting the use of AI systems within the team and wider organization
• Development and use of Agentic AI platforms
• Experience with LLMs, speech recognition and text-to-speech engines
• Genuine interest humanoid robots

At AppDirect, we believe that innovation thrives in an environment that houses diversity of excellence, experience and thought. We respect each AppDirector as their own fingerprint; unique with no one alike. We foster an environment of inclusion without regard to race, religion, age, sexual orientation, or gender identity enabling AppDirectors to embrace their uniqueness to do their best work. As such, we strongly encourage applications from Indigenous peoples, racialized people, people with disabilities, people from gender and sexually diverse communities, and/or people with intersectional identities.

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