Founding Product Manager

Founding Product Manager

Circonomit · Cologne, Germany (Hybrid) · Full-time · Posted 2026-10-01

Workplace: hybrid

Department: Tech

Description

Hi, we're Dana and Erik, the founders of Circonomit. We build the decision platform industrial companies use to plan their production.

Dana sees the customer side. She needs to know which use cases we can sell today, which we cannot, and what a demo is allowed to claim.

Erik sees the engineering side. He needs requirements that are ready to be built, complete, and clear about what we deliberately leave out.

The product sits between the two, and that is this role. We sell vertically, one use case at a time, while the product has to stay general enough to serve the next customer without being rebuilt. You decide what we build next, in which order, and what we decline.

How you will be measured: how much of today's project work is standard product a year from now, and how quickly a recognised customer problem becomes a usable capability.

We came out of RWTH research, raised €2.8M with Vorwerk Ventures, and have customers running on our models today. Small team, Cologne office.

Requirements

• 5+ years in product management, or consulting with genuine product proximity. You have owned a product area end to end, not only a backlog.
• A technical and analytical foundation: engineering, data, operations research, quantitative controlling, or finance with real modelling.
• You recognise when a requirement creates technical debt or will not be reusable at the next customer. You will not write production code.
• Experience deciding under incomplete information, and explaining the trade-offs afterwards: what you chose, why, and what it cost.
• You are comfortable working directly with plant managers and controllers, and understand how they decide today.
• German at C1 level or above, and fluent English. Customer conversations happen in German.
• Existing work visa for Germany.

You should enjoy being in front of customers in your first week, and deciding without a research team behind you. Priorities change as we learn from customers, and we make scope and trade-offs explicit together.

Benefits

• Ownership. The roadmap, and where the line between product and customer project sits.
• Shaping the role. This is the founding product role. You define how product works here: discovery, prioritisation, and the standards between product and engineering.
• Exposure. You present your roadmap and the reasoning behind it to the board, and you sit in the core strategy conversations.
• Real-world impact. Customers plan their production on our models today.
• Direct collaboration. Small team, no org chart. We work directly together. Weekly feedback, both ways.
• Compensation. Competitive salary plus a VSOP package reflecting your contribution and development in the role.
• Hybrid work. Our HQ is in Cologne, and we meet there regularly.
• Your setup and everyday extras. Hardware of your choice · AI tooling budget · sports membership · Deutschland-Ticket.

Process: An intro call, a second conversation with the team, a 60- to 90-minute live case on a real customer requirement, then in-person conversations with the team.

"Hustle the day, analyse at night, reinforce something outstanding." Period.

Apply

Apply at Circonomit

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