Technical Product Manager

Technical Product Manager, Software & AI Agents (Core Platform)

Location: Brooklyn, NY (5 Days Onsite)

Compensation: $200K–$270K Base

Company: $55M Seed-Funded AI & Robotics Startup

About the Opportunity

Shields Group Search is partnering with a well-funded, early-stage AI and robotics startup developing autonomous scientific laboratories that dramatically accelerate materials discovery.

The company combines AI agents, machine learning, robotic automation, and physical experimentation to discover and validate new materials in weeks rather than years. Backed by $55M in seed funding, the team consists of approximately 47 engineers, ML researchers, and scientists.

They're hiring a Technical Product Manager to own the core software, data infrastructure, and AI agent platform powering their autonomous research systems. This role reports directly to the Co-founder and President and offers significant ownership over foundational technical and product decisions.

What You'll Do

• Own the roadmap for the core software and AI platform, including build-versus-buy decisions and defining shared infrastructure versus individual capabilities.
• Define APIs, data infrastructure, workflow orchestration, experiment records, and integrations connecting agents, models, and robotic laboratories.
• Shape AI agent capabilities, including tool use, planning, execution, evaluation frameworks, reliability, and human-in-the-loop controls.
• Partner with ML researchers and scientists to connect model predictions, robotic experimentation, and real-world results into continuous learning loops.
• Own model-serving requirements, performance, observability, scalability, security, and data governance.
• Define how researchers and customers interact with the platform, inspect agent decisions, and consume results through APIs, reports, and data exports.
• Establish meaningful evaluation metrics that connect model and agent performance to real laboratory and customer outcomes.
• Work directly with engineers, scientists, and leadership to prioritize technical initiatives, resolve competing perspectives, and translate customer needs into product requirements.

What We're Looking For

• 5–7 years of product management experience, preferably at early-stage startups, with demonstrated 0-to-1 ownership.
• At least 1 year directly shipping AI agent or ML-powered products, ideally involving agentic systems, AI infrastructure, or technical platforms.
• Strong technical depth: Comfortable reading code, building lightweight prototypes, and discussing architecture, APIs, data pipelines, integrations, and engineering tradeoffs.
• AI reliability expertise: Understands agent evaluations, grounding, tool failures, model limitations, and human-in-the-loop workflows.
• Technical product judgment: Able to connect model benchmarks to real-world outcomes and independently make architectural, prioritization, and build-versus-buy decisions.
• Cross-functional leadership: Comfortable working directly with engineers, ML researchers, and scientists, challenging assumptions, and building alignment without formal authority.
• Startup mindset: Scrappy, self-directed, low-ego, and comfortable building products and processes from scratch.

Particularly Interesting Backgrounds

• AI agents, LLM applications, ML infrastructure, MLOps, and developer platforms.
• Robotics, autonomous systems, defense technology, and laboratory automation.
• Scientific software, materials science, chemistry, physics-based simulations, and computational research.
• Bayesian optimization, active learning, and closed-loop experimentation.
• Technical founders, former engineers, or startup PMs with technical degrees and enterprise AI experience.

Compensation & Details

• Base Salary: $200K–$270K
• Location: Brooklyn Navy Yard, NYC — 5 days onsite
• Funding: $55M Seed
• Reporting To: Co-founder and President
• Visa: O-1 sponsorship available; TN accepted. H-1B eligibility unconfirmed.

Apply

If you're a hands-on technical Product Manager who enjoys building AI-native products, working closely with exceptional engineers and researchers, and tackling complex 0-to-1 challenges, we'd love to connect.