Product Manager, Mill Commercial Hardware

Mill•San Bruno, CA

18d

About The Position

Mill is a waste prevention technology company reimagining what it means to eliminate waste, starting with food. We build smart systems and infrastructure for homes, businesses, and municipalities that transform food scraps from landfill-bound waste into valuable resources, including chicken feed. Tens of thousands of Mill’s residential food recyclers are already helping households divert millions of pounds of food scraps every year, paving the way for our upcoming launch of Mill Commercial—the industry’s first end-to-end solution for managing, understanding, and preventing food waste in commercial environments (e.g. grocery, restaurants, food services). At Mill, we are passionate about building easy-to-use, beautifully designed technologies that keep food in the food system and out of landfills. About the Role We're looking for a Product Manager to drive our commercial hardware roadmap, from current development through customer launch to new SKUs and accessory products. This is an execution role: you'll keep the Mill Commercial program moving by staying on top of the details, following through on decisions, and making sure Engineering, Ops, and Sales stay coordinated week to week. You'll translate field learnings, customer requirements, and engineering/cost/schedule constraints into clear product decisions and requirements. You'll be accountable for defining what the product should do and why, while partnering with Engineering, Ops, and Sales to make hard tradeoffs and deliver a successful program. You'll also work closely with the sales team to enable our design partnerships and define the product roadmap.

Requirements

5-7 years of product management experience; at least 3 years on hardware or electromechanical products
Strong cross-functional executor: you can keep Eng, Ops, and Sales coordinated, and you run meetings that produce clear decisions and owners
Technical depth: you're comfortable in a room full of engineers, and while you don't need to design the hardware you can engage substantively on tradeoffs and know when to escalate
Experience shipping hardware: you've taken a hardware product through late-stage development, pilot, and into commercial deployment
Field and customer experience: you've supported early deployments, you know what breaks in the real world, and you close the feedback loop fast
Clear, direct communicator: you write tight requirements and facilitate focused reviews

Nice To Haves

Experience with commercial food service, institutional kitchens, or food waste/recycling equipment
Experience with field-serviceable hardware or devices requiring ongoing maintenance and support
Familiarity with IoT-connected hardware products
Experience at an early-stage hardware startup

Responsibilities

Define and maintain clear product requirements across the full development cycle (from current hardware phase through commercial launch) grounded in customer needs, field learnings, and business constraints
Partner deeply with Mechanical, Electrical, Systems, Firmware Engineering teams to overcome technical challenges and maintain development momentum
Working with Industrial Design to ensure the product looks, feels, and operates the way commercial customers expect and in line with the Mill brand
Champion for cost, user experience, serviceability, and reliability optimization
Make and document product decisions in weekly hardware and program reviews; keep Design, Engineering, Ops, and Sales aligned on priorities and tradeoffs
Work with Ops to synthesize field learnings into actionable product improvements, closing the loop fast between the field and engineering
Partner with Sales to understand what early customers need, translate that into product requirements, and ensure the product is ready for deployment
Own the product roadmap beyond Gen 1, including accessories, and work with Sales to identify what the next product needs to do to expand our market
Surface blockers, tradeoffs, and risks to leadership with enough context to make good decisions quickly
Define and track key performance metrics for both product development and in-market performance