Founding Product Manager

• Hi, we're Dana and Erik, the founders of Circonomit. We build the decision platform industrial companies use to plan their production.
• Dana sees the customer side. She needs to know which use cases we can sell today, which we cannot, and what a demo is allowed to claim.
• Erik sees the engineering side. He needs requirements that are ready to be built, complete, and clear about what we deliberately leave out.
• The product sits between the two, and that is this role. We sell vertically, one use case at a time, while the product has to stay general enough to serve the next customer without being rebuilt. You decide what we build next, in which order, and what we decline.
• How you will be measured: how much of today's project work is standard product a year from now, and how quickly a recognised customer problem becomes a usable capability.
• We came out of RWTH research, raised €2.8M with Vorwerk Ventures, and have customers running on our models today. Small team, Cologne office.

Requirements

• 5+ years in product management, or consulting with genuine product proximity. You have owned a product area end to end, not only a backlog.
• A technical and analytical foundation: engineering, data, operations research, quantitative controlling, or finance with real modelling.
• You recognise when a requirement creates technical debt or will not be reusable at the next customer. You will not write production code.
• Experience deciding under incomplete information, and explaining the trade-offs afterwards: what you chose, why, and what it cost.
• You are comfortable working directly with plant managers and controllers, and understand how they decide today.
• German at C1 level or above, and fluent English. Customer conversations happen in German.
• Existing work visa for Germany.
• You should enjoy being in front of customers in your first week, and deciding without a research team behind you. Priorities change as we learn from customers, and we make scope and trade-offs explicit together.

Benefits

• Ownership.
• The roadmap, and where the line between product and customer project sits.
• Shaping the role.
• This is the founding product role. You define how product works here: discovery, prioritisation, and the standards between product and engineering.
• Exposure.
• You present your roadmap and the reasoning behind it to the board, and you sit in the core strategy conversations.
• Real-world impact.
• Customers plan their production on our models today.
• Direct collaboration.
• Small team, no org chart. We work directly together. Weekly feedback, both ways.
• Compensation.
• Competitive salary plus a VSOP package reflecting your contribution and development in the role.
• Hybrid work.
• Our HQ is in Cologne, and we meet there regularly.
• Your setup and everyday extras.
• Hardware of your choice · AI tooling budget · sports membership · Deutschland-Ticket.
• Process:
• An intro call, a second conversation with the team, a 60- to 90-minute live case on a real customer requirement, then in-person conversations with the team.
• "Hustle the day, analyse at night, reinforce something outstanding." Period.