Founding Head of Product – Physical AI Infrastructure

Glacian•Pittsburgh, PA

20h•Hybrid

About The Position

Glacian is a Physical AI software company solving the data center power and cooling bottleneck. We provide a deterministic safety and intelligence layer that fuses high-fidelity physics-based digital twins with meta-reinforcement learning to understand the complex physics, environment, and industrial systems of data centers. This is a rare opportunity to define the product vision and build the foundational strategy of a proven Physical AI platform at the exact moment it moves from validated research into its first live commercial deployments. The person who joins now will define Glacian's product vision from the ground up, shaping the roadmap, establishing the product strategy, and building the foundational framework for how a Physical AI platform serves mission-critical infrastructure at scale. They will work directly with the founding team, researchers, and early customers to translate over a decade of physics-based AI research into product capabilities that operators can deploy, trust, and rely on in reliability-critical environments. They will own the complete product lifecycle — from discovery and definition through prioritization, development, and launch — establishing the processes that enable fast iteration without sacrificing enterprise-grade reliability. They will play a defining role in building the product function itself: setting the product culture, the prioritization framework, and the practices that every product manager who follows will build on. This role contributes to making mission-critical infrastructure more efficient and more sustainable, with real, measurable, and significant impact. The role offers growth into a senior product leadership position as the company scales, with meaningful early-stage equity and the career trajectory of someone who built something that mattered. This is a collaborative, high-ownership role where you will shape product vision, establish the product function, and solve genuinely hard problems from day one.

Requirements

BS in Engineering, Science, Technology, Business, Management or related field.
A track record of 5+ years of direct work experience in product management, including demonstrated leadership roles within enterprise technology organizations.
Proven experience building and shipping software platforms for complex operational or infrastructure environments, with a clear record of delivering enterprise-grade products used in reliability-sensitive settings.
Substantive understanding of data center infrastructure and operational systems — including power management, cooling, environmental monitoring, and facility management platforms — or a demonstrated ability to acquire this knowledge rapidly and apply it at a professional level.
Demonstrated success managing challenging customer engagement while maintaining strong relationships and delivering results.
Ability to operate across the full product lifecycle: from early discovery and stakeholder alignment through definition, prioritization, development oversight, and commercial launch.
Proven experience taking concepts from architecture and design through customer deployment, ensuring technical excellence while meeting customer objectives.
Experience partnering directly with engineering teams on product architecture and technical requirements, with the ability to engage substantively on design decisions.
Ability to work cross-functionally with research scientists, engineers, and industry partners, translating between technical depth and practical product requirements in both directions.
High comfort level operating in an early-stage environment where product decisions are made with incomplete information, priorities shift, and ownership is broad. Comfort with ambiguity and autonomous decision-making are essential.

Nice To Haves

Experience building or managing AI-enabled products, with a working understanding of the machine learning product lifecycle, including data pipelines, model deployment, and monitoring.
Background in mission-critical environments involving security, safety, or regulatory standards — particularly relevant to the reliability expectations of data center or industrial infrastructure.
Prior experience as a founding product leader at an early-stage startup, including building product management practices and team culture from the ground up.
Familiarity with DCIM systems, building management systems, or related facility management platforms — helpful context for understanding how operators currently manage the infrastructure Glacian's platform interacts with.
Practical, execution-oriented, and fast-moving: someone who makes sound decisions quickly and maintains momentum without waiting for perfect information.
Self-driven and highly collaborative: capable of setting product direction independently while keeping founders, engineers, and customer stakeholders genuinely aligned.
Low ego and team-oriented: brings solutions and clarity to ambiguous problems rather than friction or territory.
Comfortable engaging directly with technical operators and engineers in the field, translating complex technology into clear, practical products that solve real problems.
Genuinely motivated by building products with measurable real-world impact in infrastructure that matters — not looking for a role where the stakes are cosmetic.

Responsibilities

Define and drive the product vision, roadmap, and platform strategy for Glacian's AI-powered infrastructure platform.
Identify opportunities to improve data center operational visibility, efficiency, reliability, and performance.
Translate long-term platform architecture requirements into near-term product priorities that reflect both customer needs and market dynamics.
Ensure the product roadmap is grounded in a substantive understanding of how data center operators work and what operational challenges genuinely constrain them.
Develop a substantive understanding of data center operational workflows and infrastructure systems, including power management, cooling, environmental monitoring, and facility management platforms.
Work directly with operators and engineers in the field to identify real operational challenges and validate product assumptions against actual facility conditions.
Translate customer feedback and market insight into scalable product capabilities that reflect how mission-critical environments are actually managed.
Own the full product lifecycle from discovery and definition through prioritization, development, and launch.
Establish processes and practices that enable fast, iterative development while maintaining the enterprise-grade reliability and security standards required by mission-critical environments.
Ensure the platform supports secure, scalable deployments across diverse facility types, customer configurations, and operational contexts.
Ensure product architecture and features meet the requirements of mission-critical environments, including system reliability, operational safety, and secure infrastructure integration.
Work with engineering to prioritize security, resilience, and operational safeguards across the platform.
Incorporate best practices for secure data handling, infrastructure monitoring, and operational risk management into the product design and release process.
Collaborate closely with engineering on product architecture, technical requirements, and platform design decisions.
Support sales and customer success with product demonstrations, technical context, and structured customer feedback loops.
Build and lead the product management function as the company scales.
Represent the product perspective in cross-functional discussions and help establish the practices that define how Glacian builds and ships products.