Product Director — High‑Speed Optical Transceivers (reports to CMO)

Location: Bay Area — open to remote candidates

Type: Full time, onsite/hybrid as needed for partner/manufacturer collaboration

Compensation: Competitive base + equity + performance bonus (market-aligned for senior director level)

Role summary

Lead development, commercialization, and go-to-market of a new high‑speed optical transceiver product line targeting AI data center hyperscalers in an exciting corporate venture. Own product strategy, roadmap, partner/manufacturer relationships, pricing, and launch execution; report to the Chief Marketing Officer and act as the product business owner for revenue, margin, and customer adoption.

Key responsibilities

- Define and own product strategy and multi-year roadmap for 800G, 1.6T, 3.2T (and beyond) coherent and PAM‑based transceivers aimed at hyperscalers.

- Translate hyperscaler requirements (latency, power, reliability, deployment scale) into product specifications and prioritized feature set.

- Lead cross-functional teams: hardware engineering, systems, firmware, test & validation, supply chain, operations, marketing, legal, and sales.

- Establish and manage strategic supplier and ODM/OEM partnerships; negotiate design‑wins, supply agreements, and manufacturing scaling.

- Drive pricing strategy, cost optimization, margin targets, and lifecycle management (NPI → ramp → EOL).

- Build business case, financial forecasts, and KPIs; own P&L for the product line.

- Lead go‑to‑market: positioning, messaging, channel strategy, customer pilots, technical marketing, and hyperscaler procurement engagement.

- Coordinate compliance, interoperability testing, and standards engagement (IEEE, OIF, etc.).

- Support sales team efforts to identify customers, opportunities, and pricing.

Must‑have qualifications

- 10+ years product management or product leadership in optical transceivers, pluggable optics, or adjacent networking/hardware products; 5+ years leading enterprise/hyperscaler-facing products.

- Deep technical understanding of high‑speed optics (coherent optics, PAM4, DSP, silicon photonics, QSFP-DD/C form factors) and transceiver architectures.

- Proven record negotiating and closing design‑wins with hyperscalers or large cloud providers.

- Experience managing supplier/ODM relationships and scaling manufacturing for high-volume data center deployments.

- Strong P&L ownership, financial modeling, and go‑to‑market execution skills.

- Excellent stakeholder management and ability to operate at executive levels (CMO, CFO, CTO) and with hyperscaler procurement/engineering.

- Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, photonics, or related field; advanced degree preferred.

Preferred qualifications

- Experience with AI/ML workload requirements and data center architecture.

- Familiarity with standards bodies (OIF, IEEE) and interoperability test processes.

- Experience with silicon photonics, coherent DSP development, or optics packaging.

- Prior start‑up or new business unit launch experience.

KPIs / success metrics (first 12–24 months)

- Secure initial design wins with ≥1 top‑tier hyperscaler within 12 months.

- Achieve defined unit cost targets and gross margin at production ramp.

- Deliver product to spec and on schedule for at least one major launch.

- Achieve customer availability / reliability targets (e.g., target MTBF/BER).

- Revenue run‑rate milestone by month 24.

Organizational context & interactions

- Reports to: Chief Marketing Officer.

- Regular cross‑functional partners: Hardware engineering, firmware, systems engineering, supply chain, operations, sales, legal, and external partners (ODM/OEM, component suppliers).

Interview / selection criteria

- Case: present a go‑to‑market plan for a 1.6T & 3.2T coherent transceiver aimed at an AI hyperscaler (45‑minute presentation + Q&A).

- Technical deep‑dive: architecture tradeoffs for power vs. reach vs. cost.

- Reference checks: hyperscaler or supplier negotiation outcomes and manufacturing ramp examples.