Product Manager, Control & Safety Hardware

In today's dynamic worksites, seamless collaboration between people and machines is essential. FORT's platform ensures safe, secure, and dynamic control that surpasses legacy systems and next-generation AI capabilities. While autonomous machines offer significant advantages, they also introduce new safety challenges. FORT addresses these concerns by providing solutions such as the Wireless E-Stop, which allows operators to instantly stop any machine from a safe distance, enhancing safety during emergencies. Additionally, FORT's Safe Remote Control enables operators to manage heavy machinery remotely, reducing the risk of accidents and improving visibility. By ensuring communications integrity across any network, FORT empowers customers to protect their most valuable assets—people, data, and machines—ensuring they remain safe and secure. The Product Manager (PM) for the Control & Safety Hardware is a high-impact leadership role responsible for the FORT platform's intelligent control layer and safety-critical core. This role acts as the primary architect of the product vision, bridging the gap between engineering requirements and market-moving solutions. The PM will move "upstream" in the product lifecycle to engage with customers earlier, eliciting requirements that shape the future of autonomous machine control. By leveraging a deep background in functional safety and systems thinking, the PM ensures that FORT’s core platform is compliant, secure, and is the primary engine for the company’s growth into new industrial and government verticals. Key Responsibilities Strategic Leadership & Product Vision Roadmap Ownership: Define and execute the 12-month roadmap for the platform’s control & safety layers, prioritizing innovations that drive autonomy & machine intelligence. Customer Discovery: Lead the discovery phase by conducting various forms of research & engaging with stakeholders to identify needs, ensuring customer-centric requirements are established before technical development begins. Safety as a Competitive Advantage: Position FORT’s safety-critical architecture as a primary market differentiator, ensuring the product vision aligns with global standards and customer trust. New Vertical Expansion: Lead technical proposal efforts for high-stakes innovative projects. Identify and target new verticals that align with the platform vision, ensuring FORT remains the standard for safety governance across industries. Technical Execution & System Governance Requirement Lifecycle Excellence: Orchestrate a tool-agnostic requirement architecture that drives simplicity and clarity for engineering teams while maintaining rigorous compliance with ISO 9001 and SIL standards. Regulatory & Security Navigation: Act as the strategic lead for global regulatory shifts (ex. EU Machinery Regulation, Cyber Resilience Act), ensuring the platform remains ahead of compliance curves. Standards Expertise: Maintain expert knowledge of and ensure product compliance with key functional safety standards, including ISO 13849 and IEC 61508. Security Integration: Proactively monitor the evolving security landscape, integrating security-by-design principles into all functional requirements. Interface Ownership: Own the requirement lifecycle for safety-critical hardware-software interfaces and controls integration. Cross-Functional Impact Analysis: Conduct high-level trade studies and impact analysis to ensure technical alignment across all platform layers, minimizing risk and maximizing system reliability for existing and new projects. Quality & Certification (QE): Partner with Quality Engineering and Safety teams to oversee certification efforts (e.g., SIL 3) and ensure the control layer meets the highest "Definition of Done" standards. Stakeholder & Lifecycle Management Strategic Communication: Distill complex system architectures into clear, value-driven narratives for executive leadership and external partners. Operational Simplicity: Streamline the tran…