Lead Product Manager at Instrumental in Palo Alto, CA

Manufacturing advanced electronics requires understanding millions of signals generated across complex assembly processes. Instrumental builds systems that capture and analyze those signals — images, test results, and process data — enabling engineers to discover failures, identify root causes, and deploy production controls that improve yield and product maturity. Leading companies such as NVIDIA, Cisco, and Meta rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product development and scale manufacturing across global factories. Instrumental has become mission-critical for manufacturers building and scaling the next generation of AI infrastructure hardware.

In this role, you will be getting your hands dirty - visiting factories and customers, digging deep into problems, and translating insights into impactful product outcomes. You’ll be measured by your ability to move quickly, deliver results, and drive products from insight to launch with speed and quality. You’ll bring a strong product management toolkit, a bias for action, and the ability to accelerate team velocity.

This role is a player-coach position: you’ll own and drive a product area yourself while also coaching and leveling up other product managers. You’ll bring a strong product management toolkit, a bias for action, and the ability to accelerate team velocity.

We’re looking for someone who is:

• Deeply experienced with hardware manufacturing and NPI, having worked directly with CMs.
• Relentlessly about getting hands-on with customers and data.
• A self-starter who drives projects fast, ships, and iterates quickly.
• Skilled in software product management methodology and confident driving best practices with the team.
• AI-forward, spotting and executing opportunities to apply AI to accelerate daily workflows.

About Instrumental:

Founded by a team of ex-Apple engineers, Instrumental provides a collection of software technologies that enable brands and manufacturers to optimize their manufacturing process to cut waste by orders of magnitude compared to conventional solutions. This waste is non-trivial: 20 cents on every dollar spent in manufacturing is wasted in mistakes, experiments, downtime, yield loss, scrap, and returns. Our customers are top electronics companies, including Meta, NVIDIA, Bose, and others.

The Instrumental platform collects, intelligently transforms, and contextually presents manufacturing data to technical end-users, enabling them to optimize their manufacturing process in real-time. Our core technology is proprietary ML algorithms, packaged in an accessible, user-centric user interface – we believe we must have both the best technology and the best access to that technology to win. We are experiencing incredible growth, especially in the AI-Infrastructure market segment. We are looking to bring an experienced product manager onto the team to help ensure we capture the opportunity ahead.

The Instrumental product requires a product leader who has deep understanding of hardware development and the manufacturing environment, who can map, prioritize, and drive towards business success in a relatively green-field space – continuously delivering features that increase value for our customers.

Core Missions:

• Drive strategic thinking and execution for complex software products that serve manufacturing customers.
• Build strong relationships with manufacturing stakeholders - from factory floor engineers to executives - to uncover insights and drive product-market fit.
• Own the roadmap and execution for a core product area while coaching PMs on best practices in product discovery, delivery, and iteration.
• Partner with engineering, design, and leadership to prioritize initiatives, manage tradeoffs, and deliver high-velocity impact.
• Instill strong product management rituals (backlog grooming, sprint planning, retrospectives, KPI tracking) and coach the team to execute them effectively.
• Champion a culture of continuous improvement: ensure we measure success post-launch, iterate to deliver value, and avoid the “ship and move on” trap.
• Advocate for and implement AI and automation where it can accelerate discovery, decision-making, and delivery.

Requirements:

• Hardware background (mechanical, electrical, etc), with deep experience on programs that have successfully gone through NPI.
• 5+ years of software product management experience, with a strong foundation of product management best practices
• Proven ability to take initiative and drive impactful projects to completion quickly with minimal oversight.
• Comfort with ambiguity, pace, and frequent pivots inherent in a startup environment, with a track record of creating clarity for teams.
• Experience introducing and integrating AI tools/processes into product workflows.
• Demonstrated skill in setting, iterating on, and measuring KPIs to ensure ongoing product value.

We’re a growing team that works collaboratively, is supportive of each other, and is highly energized by the opportunity for a large impact. We actively work to promote an inclusive environment, valuing passion and the ability to learn. You’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t precisely match the job description!

The following is a representative annual base salary range for this position within the Bay Area: $198-214k. Job level and salary opportunities are evaluated through our interview process – we review the experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of each applicant.

Instrumental is proud to offer a highly-rated variety of benefits, including health, vision, dental, commuter plans, and parental leave.

At Instrumental, protecting company and customer information is a shared responsibility. All employees are expected to comply with company security and privacy policies and promptly report suspected security incidents or policy violations.