Director of Product Management & Operations

PRhobe, Inc.

Director of Product Management & Operations

Orinda, CA | Full-time, W-2 | Owns certification, pilot production, manufacturing and field deployment

ABOUT PRHOBE

PRhobe is rebuilding the economics of logistics tracking. Our patented RIoT device attaches to a pallet, container or trailer, reads RFID tags on the goods around it, and reports item-level location and condition to the cloud — cutting the cost of a tracked item journey from roughly $50 to $0.50. A $1.25M NSF SBIR Phase II award will take RIoT from evaluation hardware to certified, field-deployed product, with further funded scope expected soon. The NSF funding, combined with private financing, is expected to provide sufficient capital to take us beyond commercial product launch.

THE ROLE

You own the path from working prototype to certified, manufacturable, customer-deployed product. Reporting to the CEO, you lead the regulatory certification program and the pilot production and field-testing program, and you are the connective tissue between our engineers, our contract manufacturers, our industrial design consultant and our first customers. This is a hands-on leadership role; you will do the work as well as direct it.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

• Certification and compliance. Drive RIoT through pre-compliance and full certification — FCC, CE, PTCRB, UL, EMI/EMC, and IP67/IP69K. Select and manage the test house, own the certification documentation, labeling and product variants, and resolve findings without derailing schedule.

• Pilot production. Select, onboard and manage contract manufacturers for PCB assembly, enclosure fabrication and battery integration. Run two pilot build batches to budget and to a defined quality standard, and set incoming quality criteria.

• Field trials and customer pilots. Author field test plans and customer-facing installation, attachment and commissioning documentation. Run deployments across our four target markets — automotive, pharmaceutical, retail and food distribution — collect and analyze real-world data, and produce the value and field test reports that validate performance against agreed thresholds.

• Design for manufacture and cost. Hold the team to an aggressive unit BOM target. Drive DFM and cost-reduction reviews with engineering and the CM, and keep supply chain risk visible and mitigated.

• Product development process. Establish lightweight but auditable development governance — requirements traceability, design reviews, change control, release criteria — proportionate to a federally funded program and a company that intends to scale.

• Standards and market access. Represent PRhobe with industry bodies, logistics software partners and regulators across all four markets: automotive (IATF 16949, PPAP/APQP); pharmaceutical (EU/US GDP, DSCSA serialization, 21 CFR Part 11, cold chain); retail (GS1 EPC/RAIN item-level, EPCIS, inventory accuracy); and food (FSMA Rule 204 critical tracking events and key data elements).

WHAT YOU BRING

We are open on level — we title to fit. What we care about is what you have personally shipped: a candidate with 5-10 focused years who has driven a radio product through FCC and into volume manufacture is more interesting to us than one with twenty who has only supervised it.

• AI fluency — mandatory. You use Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok or equivalent daily and have multiplied your own throughput, on the order of 10x or more rather than a marginal gain. Be ready to walk us through what you delegate, what you deliberately do not, and how you verify.

• Product or program leadership for connected electronic hardware, including at least one product you personally took from prototype through certification to volume manufacture.

• Hands-on experience obtaining FCC and CE radio certifications; working knowledge of PTCRB and IP-rated ingress testing.

• Track record selecting and managing contract manufacturers and outsourced partners, including SOW and acceptance.

• Comfort in a regulated or audited environment — quality management systems, traceability and change control. You will be selling into four compliance regimes at once, and will need to get fluent in all of them fast.

• Sufficient technical depth in embedded hardware, RF and firmware to challenge estimates and interrogate test results yourself.

• A BOM cost-down program run against a hard unit target with a contract manufacturer.

• BS or MS in engineering or a closely related discipline.

NICE TO HAVE

• Logistics, supply chain, RFID or asset-tracking domain experience.

• Prior SBIR or other federally funded program experience.

• Existing relationships with contract manufacturers, and accredited certification and test laboratories.

COMPENSATION, BENEFITS AND LOCATION

Full-time W-2. $118,000–$146,000 depending on level and experience, set against the labor rates approved under our federal award. 401(k) with 6% employer match; 90% employer-paid medical, dental and vision. Based in Orinda, CA, at our facility walking distance from BART; remote and hybrid arrangements within California open to discussion. Expect travel to customer sites, contract manufacturers and accredited certification laboratories.

WHY THIS IS WORTH YOUR TIME

• Generous equity, and a market that justifies it. Early-stage equity is inherently uncertain. What we can say are the targets: ~$10 trillion global logistics (tracking) and $30 trillion product inventory. Taking tracking from $50 to $0.50 while creating the real-time inventory category is a change we expect to work at a scale with no natural ceiling.

• Ownership, and it ships. You own your discipline, and your name goes on the patents you earn. Funded, with customers waiting on pilots — your work will be deployed to customer pilots inside a year.

PRhobe is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on any protected basis. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States. This role is federally funded; daily contemporaneous time recording against project charge codes is a condition of employment.