Project Manager

The role

• Our clients are CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and founders facing high-stakes hardware decisions. You will be the trusted advisor they want at the table when those decisions are made. You will lead discovery and strategy conversations, reframe the challenge at hand, and recommend a path forward that clients can act on with confidence. Where the work is the right fit, you will show them why Kickmaker is the partner best positioned to deliver.
• This is an advisory role with true commercial ownership. Clients will listen because you have built hardware yourself, and they will act on your guidance because you know how to make a compelling case at the executive level.

What you'll do

• Lead technical strategy discussions with senior client stakeholders, constructively challenging assumptions to drive better outcomes
• Shape and defend proposals, with a focus on architecture, make-vs-buy decisions, design for manufacturing (DFM), and industrialization trade-offs
• Own Tier 0 strategic accounts and grow them across the full product lifecycle, from prototype through EVT, DVT, and PVT to mass production
• Generate new opportunities by leveraging Kickmaker’s network, industry events, and your own thought leadership, and drive them through to signature
• Guide Kickmaker’s engineering teams on your accounts by setting technical direction, keeping delivery on track, and ensuring client success from kickoff to handover
• Partner with our engineering and operations leads in the US and France to oversee scoping and risk management

What we're looking for

• 10+ years in hardware engineering (robotics), with deep NPI experience and products you’ve helped ship from prototype to production. You can debate design choices as an equal with a client’s senior engineers and earn their trust. This is the heart of the role and our top priority.
• Executive presence: a clear point of view, comfort disagreeing with C-level leaders, and the ability to turn a technical argument into a business decision
• Experience with consultative, long-cycle B2B sales
• Excellent written and verbal English
• US-based, authorized to work in the US, and ready to travel for clients

A plus

• A background at an engineering, deep-tech, or product development consultancy where you took hardware from concept to production, or a hardware startup of your own
• A proven shift into strategic or commercial work (CTO, VP of Engineering, CCO, General Manager, Principal Consultant, Senior Solutions Leader, or Director of Sales Engineering), with accounts you’ve grown or deals you’ve closed
• R&D background: patents, publications, or leading an advanced engineering lab
• Experience in manufacturing transfer and working with outsourced supply chains
• A strong network among US hardware, robotics, medtech, industrial or consumer-electronics leaders
• Exposure to US deployment of French or European business