Product Manager, R&D

AssetWatch is a company dedicated to enhancing manufacturing uptime through innovative condition monitoring solutions. The Product Manager – R&D Initiatives will lead exploratory product initiatives, collaborating with various teams to evaluate new technologies and ensure successful pilot deployments.

Responsibilities:

• End-to-End R&D Initiative Leadership: Own exploratory initiatives from hypothesis formation through pilot execution and final go/no-go recommendation
• Experiment Design & Execution: Define clear success criteria, measurable KPIs, and structured validation plans to assess technical feasibility, customer value, and scalability
• Cross-Functional Orchestration: Work across R&D, Engineering, Data Science, Hardware, Operations, Sales, Customer Success, and Executive stakeholders to align priorities and drive execution
• Customer Pilot Management: Partner with Sales and Customer Success to identify pilot customers, scope deployments, gather feedback, and translate field learnings into product insights
• Commercial & Operational Assessment: Evaluate how new initiatives impact pricing models, service delivery, supply chain, reliability workflows, and internal systems
• Ambiguity Navigation: Bring structure to loosely defined opportunities, clarify tradeoffs, identify risks, and drive informed decision-making with incomplete information
• Strategic Communication: Synthesize technical findings and business implications into clear recommendations for leadership
• Scalability Planning: Ensure validated initiatives can transition smoothly from experimental phase into productization and broader deployment
• Portfolio Contribution: Help shape AssetWatch’s R&D operating model and contribute to prioritization discussions around innovation investments

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or related technical field required
• 5–8 years of experience in product management, technical program management, R&D leadership, or similar cross-functional roles
• Experience leading initiatives that span hardware and software
• Experience running pilot programs or customer-facing validation studies
• Strong project management and organizational skills
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, evolving environments
• Strong analytical skills with experience interpreting experimental or performance data
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders without direct authority
• Self-starter mindset with high ownership and accountability
• Experience in industrial IoT, condition monitoring, predictive maintenance, or reliability engineering
• Experience bringing early-stage concepts to market
• Familiarity with hardware validation and deployment processes
• Experience working with Sales and Customer Success teams on pilot or beta programs
• Startup or high-growth company experience
• MBA or advanced technical degree