Product Lead — Next-Gen Product

The Role

Instrumental is hiring a Product Lead to be embedded with our most strategic customers—companies running high-complexity, high-volume electronics assembly—and turn deep manufacturing intuition into shipped product. You'll work as a true partner with a tech lead: you bring the process knowledge, the customer reality, and the ability to decompose messy production problems into solvable pieces. They bring the technical possibility. The best solutions come from that intersection.

You'll own translating product vision (set with the CPO) into a concrete plan, then drive execution with a small engineering pod. Instead of writing traditional PRDs, you'll collaborate directly and use AI agents to handle coordination and backlog work—freeing you to focus on what only you can do: understanding what's actually broken on the line, judging what matters most, and shipping fast iterations that deliver real value to process and quality engineers in the field.

Your north star is customer outcomes and iteration speed—moving from prototype to GA as quickly as the product and customers allow. This role reports directly to the CPO.

Core Missions

• Turn product vision and strategy into a concrete plan, then decompose that plan into smaller, shippable pieces that your pod can tackle iteratively.

• Own your pod's outcomes while collaborating with your tech lead— together you design solutions, make tradeoff decisions, sequence work, and ship.

• Be forward-deployed with your design partner customer—spend real time in their environment, build custom solutions that solve their specific problems, then work to scale what works into repeatable product.

• Be in the factory, on the calls, in the data.

• Ship small iterations that deliver value consistently—this is how we validate product direction. Speed of validated learning is the metric.

• Make daily judgment calls on scope and priority without escalating— if the CPO becomes a bottleneck for your pod, the system is broken.

• Use AI for coordination, documentation, and task management—freeing your time for the work that actually matters: problem decomposition, customer truth, and judgment.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in a role that required breaking down complex, ambiguous problems and delivering solutions with a small team—product management, forward-deployed engineering, solutions engineering, technical program management, or founding a company.

• Deep comfort in manufacturing or adjacent industrial environments— you speak the language of quality engineers, line operators, and manufacturing managers. Or you've worked in a similarly complex operational domain and can learn manufacturing fast.

• Demonstrated ability to work in a tight partnership with engineering—co-designing solutions, not just writing requirements.

• Track record of shipping fast in ambiguous environments with minimal process overhead.

• Strong customer-facing skills— you've spent real time with customers in their environment, not just in conference rooms.

• AI-forward in how you work—using AI tools aggressively for your own productivity.