Product Strategy and Market Intelligence Lead

Please note that we are unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position.

About Proper Voltage

Proper Voltage builds intelligent battery systems that enable advanced battery chemistries to work in real-world products. Our platform supports applications across uninterruptible power systems, robotics, defense, data centers, and other power-critical infrastructure.

We are moving from R&D into commercialization, and clarity, credibility, and consistency in our technical materials now directly affect customer adoption and fundraising outcomes.

Job Overview

Proper Voltage builds adaptive battery systems that enable advanced chemistries to be deployed across real-world industrial applications. As we move from early commercialization into scale, the biggest risk to the business is not technical feasibility. It is allocating engineering, certification, and capital resources to products that do not have sufficient market pull or economic justification.

This role exists to prevent that failure mode.

The Product Strategy and Market Intelligence Lead owns early-stage commercial truth. This person is responsible for independently validating market size, adoption likelihood, and economic viability before the company commits material resources to new products or custom programs.

Own the answer to the question:

"Should Proper Voltage build this before a customer commits?"

And ensure that answer is reflected consistently across sales, engineering, and leadership decision-making.

Responsibilities

Market Intelligence and Validation

• Build bottoms-up market sizing for specific battery form factors, voltage classes, and application segments.
• Assess willingness to pay, switching friction, and adoption risk across customer types.
• Identify where chemistry flexibility provides a defensible advantage versus where it is incremental.
• Maintain a short list of priority markets where speculative product development is justified.

Program Classification and Gating

• Classify all inbound opportunities into one of three categories:
• • Production platform.
  • Pilot program with required NRE and cost recovery.
  • Custom one-off (generally rejected unless strategically critical).
• Define and enforce economic gates that control engineering allocation, certification and tooling spend, whether SOWs or quotes may be issued.

Commercial Economics

• Define minimum viable volume thresholds by product category
• Establish standard NRE, certification, and tooling recovery frameworks
• Pressure-test forecasts and assumptions provided by customers, sales, and partners
• Identify when programs are structurally uneconomic even if technically feasible

Sales Enablement and Early Engagement

• Partner closely with sales leadership on early customer conversations where scope and intent are ambiguous
• Force clarity on "special project vs production program" early in the engagement cycle
• Provide sales with clear frameworks and language to set expectations with customers

Internal Alignment

• Act as a neutral arbiter between sales optimism and engineering reality
• Ensure leadership decisions are grounded in market evidence rather than anecdote or momentum
• Create lightweight internal documentation that explains why programs are approved or declined

Required Qualifications

• 6+ years experience in product strategy, market intelligence, product operations, or commercial strategy within industrial, hardware, or infrastructure-oriented companies.
• Comfort operating with incomplete information and making defensible judgment calls.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to build and defend bottoms-up market models.
• Demonstrated ability to challenge assumptions and say no to attractive but uneconomic opportunities.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills focus