Founding Product Manager

We are building the world's decision infrastructure: the strategic twin of every industrial organization for complex combinatorial problems. We unlocked what wasn't possible before: mapping reality with its levers and constraints into a computer, then running n-dimensional optimization on critical value-chain decisions. We help Europe stay strong and the German Mittelstand make good decisions between market shifts, orders, machines and people.

Founded by Dana (CEO) and Erik (CTO) from RWTH research, backed by a €2.8M round led by Vorwerk Ventures, with customers live on our optimization models.

We move fast. We care. No patience for problems left unsolved.

Your mission

You own the product and the priorities behind it. The hard part of that job here is structural: our go-to-market runs vertically, one use case at a time, while the product has to stay general enough to serve the next customer without being rebuilt.

You sit between Sales and Engineering and translate in both directions. Towards Sales: which use cases we can sell today, which we cannot, and what a demo is allowed to claim. Towards Engineering: which requirement is ready to be built, what it needs to be complete, and what we deliberately leave out.

This is an early-stage role and we expect you to shape it rather than inherit it. We are extending the core of the application right now, which means your first decisions land while the product is still taking form. At the beginning, a meaningful part of your work will be spent on customer projects, close to the people whose decisions we model. That is where you see which patterns are worth turning into product.

We will not sugarcoat it: short deadlines, wild workload, and a go to market with the product and its tech that is a day to day focus and iteration process.

What you'll own

• The product roadmap and the reasoning behind it: what we build next, in which order, and what we decline.
• The boundary between standard product, configuration, and manual work for one customer.
• Requirements that engineering can build from: scope, acceptance criteria, and a clear statement of what is out.
• What we can credibly promise a customer, including where the product's limits currently are.
• Proofs of Value that you run yourself, and responsibility for individual accounts.
• Prototypes you build to test features with customers before we commit engineering time.
• How product works here: discovery, prioritisation, and the standards between product and engineering.
  

Your number: how much of what is project work today is standard product a year from now, and the time from a recognised customer problem to a usable capability.

This role is not for you if your strength is backlog, process and ceremonies, if you need research and design capacity before you can decide, if a complex industrial domain is an obstacle rather than the interesting part, if you don't like data or if you need more than three days before your first customer conversation.

Requirements

• A technical and analytical foundation, engineering, data analytics, data science, operations research, quantitative controlling, or finance with real modelling from a technical degree, technical consulting, or technical product management. You will not write production code, but you need to recognise when a requirement creates technical debt, or is built in a way that cannot be reused at the next customer.
• 5+ years in product management, or consulting with genuine product proximity. More important than the title: you have owned a product area end to end before, not only a backlog.
• Experience deciding under incomplete information, and the ability to explain your trade-offs afterwards: what you chose, why, and what it cost.
• You can sit with a plant manager or a controller, understand how they decide today, and leave the room knowing what the product has to do about it.
• Good to have, not a cut off: optimization experience, deeper knowledge in manufacturing, supply chain or S&OP, enterprise B2B sales cycles involving operations, IT and controlling, or early-stage startup experience.
• German C1 or higher, fluent in English.
• NRW-based (Cologne office), optionally Munich, Stuttgart, Berlin area or else willing to work hybrid. Open to find a way if we fit.

Benefits

• Impact. You work with substance and lead what the product becomes.
• Ownership. You define how product works here: what we build, what we decline, and where the boundary between product and project sits. No approval loops.
• The people next to you. You work directly with the researchers and modellers, have access to tech deliveries and execute and build on eye level with the founders.
• Exposure. You present your own roadmap and the reasoning behind it to the board, you sit in the core strategy conversations, and you stand in front of the people whose decisions we model.
• Feedback speed. You will know directly what you are up to, we speak out loud, we adjust, we grow. Together.
• High stakes. Competitive salary and relevant room in the equity package (VSOP) to match your contribution and your career development.

Process: Intro call with Dana or Erik, second call with one from the team, a 60 to 90-minute live case exercise on a real customer requirement, then team conversations in person. Before you decide, ask us to put you on a call with someone who will tell you the good, the bad and the ugly.

"Hustle the day, analyse at night, reinforce something outstanding." Period.