The RoleThis role reports to the CTO and leads a team of five: three Product Managers - for Modeling, Simulation & Optimization, and Distributed Computing - plus nTop's two-person UX design and research team. It's a foundational leadership seat: this person sets the operating cadence for three technical PM teams and owns the product point of view that ties their work together.
What You'll Do- Turn vision into a working system. Translate nTop's 2-5 year direction into concrete objectives, a resourcing plan, and a cadence the three teams follow.
- Coach product management as a craft, in the room. Sit directly in roadmap and tradeoff decisions with your three PMs, so their technical depth turns into product calls the business can act on.
- Set the criteria for when nTop builds, partners, or leaves a capability to the broader ecosystem - including how nTop positions its core geometry engine relative to the fast-growing physics-AI ecosystem.
- Own the seams between teams - the handoffs where geometry becomes a simulation mesh, where simulation results train faster surrogate models, and where both feed into the UX - plus the metrics that show whether the three teams are reinforcing each other.
- Meet with customers and stay connected to the broader industry to pressure-test direction against how design teams actually work, in a domain where mistakes are costly and hard to undo.
- Manage the UX design and research team directly.
- Represent Product Platform on nTop's leadership team and help set company strategy.
What We're Looking ForMust-haves- 8-10+ years in product management, several of them spent coaching or managing other PMs directly - in the room for real prioritization and tradeoff calls, not just reviewing their output after the fact
- A track record of turning a leadership-defined, multi-year vision into concrete objectives and a working system a team can execute against - you'll operationalize the direction nTop's CTO sets, while owning real strategic calls within it, such as where nTop builds versus partners
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field - or, without the degree, hands-on experience running CFD simulations, working in CAD/PLM systems, or building simulation-driven engineering workflows deep enough to hold your own in a technical design review
- Experience managing managers or leading a product organization spanning multiple teams, including managing or closely partnering with a UX design and research function
- Demonstrated use of data and structured frameworks to guide build-vs-partner investment decisions
- Strong communication across technical and executive audiences
Nice-to-haves- Experience in aerospace, maritime, propulsion, industrial energy, or motorsports, ideally paired with exposure to usage-based or concurrent licensing models
- Advanced degree (MS/PhD) in a relevant engineering discipline, or an MBA
CompensationThe base pay range for this role is $225,000 - $260,000 per year.
