Robotics Product Owner (m/f/d)

The Role: What to expect

We are looking for a driven and experienced Product Owner to shape, evolve, and scale our core products across fleet management software and autonomous robotics platforms, with a strong focus on partner robot integrations. Depending on business needs, the role may focus on SaaS, robotics, or the intersection of both, with a key responsibility in enabling third-party robot providers to integrate seamlessly into our ecosystem.

Role Responsibilities: What you will do

• Define and continuously refine the product vision and strategy in close collaboration with internal & external stakeholders, ensuring alignment with business objectives and customer value.
• Translate strategic goals into clear, actionable product outcomes, including scalable and standardized partner integration capabilities (e.g. VDA5050-based interoperability).
• Own and maintain the product roadmap, balancing features, reliability, and technical health.
• Prioritize initiatives based on customer feedback, business impact, technical constraints, and market dynamics.
• Ensure partner robot enablement and integration scalability are consistently represented in roadmap decisions.
• Gather, clarify, and challenge requirements from customers, sales, deployment, and internal teams.
• Convert complex needs into well-structured epics, user stories, and acceptance criteria, including clear integration requirements, API behaviors, and protocol compliance expectations.
• Act as the primary interface between stakeholders and development teams.
• Support engineering teams with clear priorities, fast decisions, and pragmatic trade-offs.
• Work closely with developers and partners to troubleshoot integration issues, unblock technical challenges, and ensure successful end-to-end integration delivery.
• Act as a key point of contact for external robot partners, guiding them through the integration journey from initial alignment to production readiness.
• Support partners hands-on in achieving full integration with our fleet manager (e.g. VDA5050), including clarification of requirements, debugging, and validation.
• Identify recurring integration challenges and translate them into product improvements, tooling, and standardization efforts.
• Work with a wide range of stakeholders, including teams with a long product ownership history and external technical partners with varying levels of maturity.

Role Requirements: What you need to succeed

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Robotics or a related field.
• 2+ years of experience as a Product Owner, Product Manager, or similar role.
• Experience with robotics systems, hardware-software products, or complex technical products
• Solid technical foundation in software, systems engineering, robotics, or hardware-related domains.
• Strong ability to understand and discuss APIs, communication protocols, and system interactions, ideally in robotics or industrial environments.
• Experience working with external partners, system integrations, or interoperability standards.
• Comfortable operating in environments with high technical complexity and many stakeholders.
• Ability to work closely with developers and debug integration issues with partners in a hands-on manner.
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment, with the ability to work independently and a passion for driving continuous improvement and excellence.
• Fluency in English is required, proficiency in German is a significant plus.

Why idealworks

• At idealworks, you will find an international working environment and become part of an experienced, open team where mutual trust counts. You will feel at home from the very first second!
• Experience a first-hand start-up feeling and flat hierarchies with varied and responsible tasks that you work on independently.
• Look forward to hybrid working model with 30 vacation days per year and various opportunities to balance your free time, family and job.
• For your commitment to helping us achieve our mission, you will not only be rewarded with appreciation, but also with above-average pay including a bonus scheme and an annual personal development budget.
• We offer exciting corporate benefits, an attractive company pension scheme and regular team events.
• Our modern office is easily accessible by public transport, bike and car and offers numerous catering options for relaxed lunch breaks with your team.
• Driven by our unique corporate culture, the five values "passion for results", "wellbeing", "personal growth", "trust" and "being and acting as one team" determine our daily actions and cooperation.

About us

Idealworks transforms industrial operations into efficient, fully automated environments where logistics, robotics, software, and people work seamlessly together. Founded in 2020 as a BMW Group subsidiary, the company helps businesses optimize and automate workflows across warehouses, production facilities, and logistics operations. At the core of its offering is the Idealworks Orchestration System (Idealworks OS), the control layer that integrates simulation technology and connects heterogeneous robots for different applications, peripheral devices, and IT systems through a single operational logic. Headquartered in Munich, Idealworks collaborates closely with partners and customers worldwide to advance the next generation of industrial automation.