Forward Deployed Product Manager

Role Summary

About CruxOCM

CruxOCM is the leading automation company in heavy industry, specifically targeting the energy sector. We are a venture capital-backed company dedicated to transforming this industry.

Control room operators require the most effective tools to perform their jobs safely and efficiently, while minimizing environmental impact and maximizing revenue. Considering that pilots have autopilot software, it's time for control room operators to have a comparable solution.

We are looking for a Forward Deployment Product Manager who will bridge the gap between software engineering and the oil & gas industry. You will be responsible for leading the end-to-end delivery of advanced software integration and automation solutions, ensuring seamless integration with industrial systems and workflows. You will act as the primary conduit between our internal engineering teams and our external industrial partners.

The Forward Deployment Product Manager, reporting to the Director of Deployment Automation, is a key role that blends leadership skills, personal skills, and technical expertise. You will join a team focused on delivering robust solutions to improve pipeline operations within customer control room environments. This role involves close collaboration with cross-functional teams (Deployment, Support, Sales, Finance, Product, and Engineering) to ensure alignment on customer requirements, project delivery, and the product roadmap.

Responsibilities

• Agile leadership: Leaddaily stand-ups, sprint planning, story pointing, sprint reviews, and team retrospectives to foster a culture of continuous improvement with best Agile practices.
• Project management: Manage multiple concurrent projects, develop comprehensive project plans, defining milestones, align timeline with customers, optimizing resource allocation, and identifying critical paths.
• AI-Driven Productivity: Leverage cutting-edge AI tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, LLMs) on a daily basis to accelerate project management tasks.
• Dependency management: Proactively identify and resolve technical or procedural dependencies and blockers to maintain delivery velocity.
• Productivity champion: Identify opportunities for internal productivity improvements through tooling, standardizing processes, developing playbook and documentation, automating tests, deployment scripts, productizing custom development, etc.
• Quality Assurance: Ensure all deliverables meet the high safety and reliability standards required for heavy industry environments.
• External Coordination: Serve as the primary point of contact for customers, managing expectations and providing transparent progress updates.
• Relationship Building: Develop deep, trust-based relationships with client-side technical leads and plant managers.
• Internal Synergy: Align cross-functional teams to ensure a unified delivery approach.

Requirements

• Qualification: Bachelor’s degree in Computer science, Engineering, Data Science, or related fields.
• Experience: 3+ years of combined experience in engineering, product development, or technical program/project management.
• Technical Acumen: Ability to discuss design tradeoffs, system architecture, and debugging with engineers.
• Hands-on AI Proficiency: Demonstrated daily experience using AI coding assistants, generative tools, and automated workflows to increase personal and engineering output.
• (Desirable) Domain Knowledge: oil and gas, hydraulic theory, fluid dynamics, advanced control

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package, including equity
• Comprehensive health benefits
• Remote-first work environment
• Flexible work arrangements
• Professional development opportunities
• Growth-mindset culture
• A diverse and inclusive environment