Product Lead, Operational Intelligence (Formic Cortex)

Formic Cortex is an initiative to help Formic scale not just technology, but judgment, execution, and operational clarity as the company grows. The unifying goal is leverage: making it easier for teams to make good decisions and execute reliably as Formic scales. This role is ideal for someone energized by ambiguity, motivated by building something new, and excited by the opportunity to influence how an organization operates at its core.

As Product Lead, Operational Intelligence (Formic Cortex), you will focus on how Formic works as a system - how decisions are made, how information flows across teams, and how complex operational work becomes repeatable at scale. Rather than owning a fixed product surface or roadmap, you will identify where complexity, ambiguity, or fragmentation slow the organization down and design mechanisms that improve consistency, leverage, and speed over time.

This is a first-of-its-kind role at Formic. The Cortex team does not yet exist, and neither does a predefined blueprint for what it becomes - you will help shape both. You’ll work across deployment, solutions, production optimization, and adjacent teams to surface patterns that aren’t visible from within any single function, and translate those insights into durable ways of working - sometimes through tools or automation, often through clearer structure, decision frameworks, or redesigned handoffs.

Over time, the systems, mechanisms, and tooling that emerge from Formic Cortex are expected to coalesce into a cohesive internal product - the operational backbone of the company. As Cortex matures, it will increasingly function as Formic’s operating system: the place where operational knowledge lives, decisions are supported, and execution is coordinated across the organization. Early on, however, the focus is on discovery, design, and leverage, ensuring that what ultimately becomes productized is grounded in how the company actually works.

In this role you will:

• Observe how work actually happens across deployment, solutions, production optimization, and adjacent teams, and surface patterns that limit speed, clarity, or consistency.
• Translate complex, experience-driven decision-making into clear structures, frameworks, and mechanisms that scale beyond individuals.
• Identify points where information breaks down, handoffs degrade, or judgment is overly concentrated, and redesign those flows to improve reliability.
• Introduce systems - process, tooling, automation, or decision frameworks as appropriate - that reduce friction and increase operational leverage.
• Partner closely with engineering to shape and deliver internal capabilities when software or automation is the right solution.
• Establish feedback loops that make it easier to learn from deployments, maintenance, and operational outcomes over time.
• Drive initiatives from discovery through execution in environments with limited precedent or definition.
• Align stakeholders across functions around priorities, tradeoffs, and shared understanding of how work should operate.
• Evaluate new technologies, methods, or approaches and assess where they meaningfully improve how the organization functions.
• Help define what “good” looks like for Formic Cortex as a capability and, over time, shape the team and operating model around it.

What makes you a great fit:

• 4+ years of experience in product, operations, systems design, technical program management, robotics, automation, or similarly cross-functional roles.
• Demonstrated ability to work in ambiguous environments where problems must be discovered, framed, and shaped before they can be solved.
• Strong systems thinking skills, with the ability to reason about organizations, workflows, and decision-making as interconnected systems.
• Experience working closely with engineers, operators, or technical subject-matter experts to turn real-world complexity into scalable solutions.
• Comfort moving between observation, synthesis, and execution without a predefined roadmap.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to build alignment across teams with different incentives, languages, and constraints.
• A track record of owning outcomes, not just deliverables.
• Willingness to spend time close to the work - whether in the field, on the factory floor, or embedded with operational teams - when insight requires it.
• 4+ years of experience in product, operations, systems design, technical program management, robotics, automation, or similarly cross-functional roles.
• Demonstrated ability to work in ambiguous environments where problems must be discovered, framed, and shaped before they can be solved.
• Strong systems thinking skills, with the ability to reason about organizations, workflows, and decision-making as interconnected systems.
• Experience working closely with engineers, operators, or technical subject-matter experts to turn real-world complexity into scalable solutions.
• Comfort moving between observation, synthesis, and execution without a predefined roadmap.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to build alignment across teams with different incentives, languages, and constraints.
• A track record of owning outcomes, not just deliverables.
• Willingness to spend time close to the work - whether in the field, on the factory floor, or embedded with operational teams - when insight requires it.

Bonus points if you have:

• Hands-on experience deploying robotics or automation systems in real production or field environments.
• Experience building internal tools or platforms that support technicians, field engineers, or operational teams.
• Background in controls, industrial robotics, PLCs, or hardware-in-the-loop testing.
• Experience applying AI or machine learning to physical-world problems such as predictive maintenance or anomaly detection.
• Familiarity with simulation frameworks or digital-twin environments used for validation or commissioning.

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