Product Lead - Formic Cortex

Who We Are:

At Formic, we’re on a mission to revolutionize American manufacturing and create more abundance in the world. We believe in continuing the American legacy of innovation by making automation accessible to all manufacturers and increasing their factory productivity by 10x. 

Supporting us in our mission, with investments thus far totaling over $60 million, are backers including Lux Capital, Initialized Capital, Blackhorn Ventures, Mitsubishi HC Capital NA, and CEOs and founders of multiple Fortune 50 companies.

As the Product Lead for Formic Cortex, you will build the intelligence layer that transforms frontline operational expertise into scalable processes, software, automation, and AI systems. Your work will redefine how Formic deploys, maintains, and scales systems by converting manual workflows with automated, repeatable, and elegant improvements. You’ll embed with various teams - including Deployment, Solutions, and Production Optimization - to capture their decision logic, map their processes, uncover bottlenecks, and translate real-world operations into intelligent systems that drive productivity and reliability. Over time, you’ll shape the engine that automates site evaluation, robot configuration, simulation, validation, and fleet management. This role is cross-functional, experimental, and entrepreneurial—ideal for someone eager to move fast, test bold ideas, and push the limits of what robotics, automation, and AI can achieve in a rapidly scaling environment.

In this role you will:

• Translate real-world decision criteria into structured logic, requirements, and clear system definitions
• Define the architecture and constraints for tools that ensure consistent execution across operational teams
• Set measurable targets for improvements and verify that delivered systems achieve those outcomes
• Create internal products that increase accuracy, speed, and reliability across deployment and support activities
• Design user flows, interfaces, and data models that streamline complex technical work
• Partner with engineering to deliver features aligned with technical feasibility and operational priorities
• Build mechanisms that validate system performance and confirm readiness before field deployment
• Introduce monitoring and diagnostic capabilities that surface early issues and inform timely action
• Support the development of structured playbooks and reference frameworks that raise organizational consistency
• Improve data pathways and integrations to enhance the flow of information between teams and systems
• Align stakeholders around requirements, tradeoffs, and timelines for key initiatives
• Manage initiative-level planning to move projects from concept to delivery with clarity and momentum
• Evaluate emerging technologies and assess their fit for internal operational needs
• Drive adoption of new tools through training, rollout planning, and continuous feedback loops

What makes you a great fit:

• 4+ years of experience in product management, technical program management, robotics deployment, automation engineering, or building operational tooling
• Strong systems thinking skills with the ability to deconstruct complex workflows and translate them into structured logic, requirements, and scalable products
• Proven ability to work with technical subject-matter experts (engineers, technicians, operators) and convert expertise into repeatable tools, processes, and system logic
• Experience with AI, automation, or simulation technologies, or demonstrated ability to learn emerging technologies quickly
• Familiarity with manufacturing, industrial automation, robotics integration, or field-based deployment environments—or experience building products that support these environments
• Comfort operating in 0→1 or high-ambiguity environments, making clear decisions with incomplete information
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, especially when aligning diverse teams around requirements, tradeoffs, and technical constraints
• Experience working closely with engineering teams, including defining requirements, scoping technical work, and managing iterative development cycles.
• Ability to run experiments, validate concepts, and iterate rapidly using data, user insights, and fast feedback loops
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple initiatives, dependencies, and stakeholders simultaneously
• Familiarity with modern product and design tools (e.g., Jira, Figma, Notion) and comfort creating lightweight specs, mockups, and proof-of-concept prototypes
• Willingness to visit customer sites, deployment environments, or manufacturing facilities as needed to understand real-world constraints

Bonus points if you have:

• Hands-on experience deploying robotics or automation systems in real production or field environments
• Experience building internal tools or platforms that support technicians, field engineers, or operational teams
• Background in controls, industrial robotics, PLCs, or hardware-in-the-loop testing
• Experience applying AI/ML to physical-world problems such as predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, or configuration intelligence
• Familiarity with simulation frameworks or digital-twin environments used for validation, configuration, or virtual commissioning

#LI-MB1

What we look for: 

We’re building a company from the ground up, so every single person we hire has a massive impact on our team, culture, and ability to accomplish our mission. While each individual brings their own unique skills and perspectives to Formic, we look for people who share our vision and act in alignment with our Operating Principles. If this sounds like you, Formic could be the place for you!

• Fearless Optimism: You share our ambitious vision of what we can accomplish. You’re aware of the challenges we will face as a startup doing new things in an old space, but you’re energized by the incredible opportunity we have to drive change for our customers, and for the manufacturing industry at large.
• Factories First: You have a strong customer focus, no matter who your customer is. You seek to make things easier and better for our customers, even if it makes your job a little harder. 
• Today, Not Tomorrow: There are always plenty of projects to tackle in a startup, but you prioritize, take accountability for work, and have a bias toward action.
• Be Right Often: You don’t do things just because that’s how they’ve always been done. You keep looking for ways to improve, seek out feedback along the way, and back your decisions up with data. 
• Made of Rubber: Just like rubber, when you fall you bounce back up. You know there’s going to be a lot of challenge and change in our work ahead but you are adaptable, resilient, and ready to thrive through it all.
• Good Baton Passes: You work with a desire to make things easier and better for your team members. You use empathy to understand the needs and goals of others and support each other so Formic can be successful together. 

Equal Opportunity

Formic is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion or religious creed, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, marital status, family or parental status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by law. All employment decisions are based on a person’s merit, business needs, and role requirements. If you require further accommodations or have questions regarding accessibility of our roles, please reach out to careers@formic.co.

AI Use

At Formic, fairness and transparency are at the heart of our hiring process. We use AI-powered tools in some interviews to help our teams evaluate candidate responses, but all final hiring decisions are made by humans. You can learn more about how AI is used in our recruitment process by reviewing our AI Hiring Disclosure linked here.