Human Robot Interaction Product Jobs

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Product Manager, HRI (Human Robot Interaction)

Sunday Robotics Redwood City, CA

Redwood City, CA

Today

$180k - $250k/yr Full time Customer Experience Human Computer Interaction Human Robot Interaction

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Job Description

Sunday Robotics is hiring a dedicated first Product Manager to lead Human Robot Interaction (HRI) for home robot Memo in Redwood City, CA (onsite).

Responsibilities

Own Memo’s character: convert the existing bio into a living “character bible” covering personality, point of view, voice, preferences, and behavior under stress so teams design against it.
Drive the HRI roadmap across all surfaces: robot motion and gestures, audio and voice, lighting, and app state and notifications, including what Memo communicates, when, and through which channel.
Define and maintain HRI triggers: for each robot state and event, specify the user-facing response across robot and app to enable engineering implementation and QA regression testing.
Lead animation as a product area: set briefs for animators, run reviews, and own three objectives:
- Legibility so first-time users can predict what Memo will do next.
- Marketable moments for filmable, on-demand behaviors.
- Delight across interactions.
Own voice and sound: define the voice itself, coordinate motion synchronization, set conversational tone and register, and ensure voice playback feels natural in a home environment.
Design human interactions with people, kids, and pets: handle greetings, waiting, asking for help, finishing tasks, and being interrupted in partnership with the Trust & Safety PM on stop conditions and recovery.
Learn from real homes: observe beta families using Memo, extract HRI feedback from dogfooding and betas, and translate findings into product requirements.
Partner with engineering teams: collaborate with behavior-stack and animation-pipeline engineers on what the system can express, and advocate for tooling needs to review and test animations.
Define and track HRI metrics including:
- Intent legibility in user testing
- Unprompted positive mentions from beta families
- Voice and animation satisfaction
- Response coverage across triggers

Requirements

4+ years in product, interaction design, or character/experience design for products people talk to, live with, or play with (examples include consumer robots, voice assistants, games, animated characters, toys, smart home, wearables, or similar).
Nice to have: design background and portfolio showing how something looks, moves, sounds, or talks; comfort directing specialists even if not the animator or sound designer.
Fluency in character and personality design: ability to combine point of view, movement style, and voice into something recognizable and emotionally resonant.
Cross-discipline experience: working across animation, sound, and UI to maintain consistency across surfaces.
Technical grounding: collaborate with engineers on what a robot can physically and computationally express, making practical tradeoffs between ideal and feasible.
User research instincts: observe how people misread the system and iterate accordingly.
Early-stage comfort: ability to write the first version of a character bible that does not yet exist.

What success looks like in 6 months

A character bible for Memo exists and is actively used across animation, voice, app design, and engineering.
The HRI trigger set is complete for the core user journey across robot and app, with owners and regression tests.
Memo’s voice, animations, and lighting read as one coherent character, with beta families unpromptedly stating this.
A fresh-eyed user can tell what Memo is about to do, is doing, and whether it worked.
Animation and voice have clear briefs, a review process, and an HRI-aligned roadmap.

Bonus

Robotics or physical product HRI experience; game or film character animation direction; voice or conversational design; work with TTS and motion-audio sync.

Compensation range: USD 180,000 - 250,000 per year

Location: Redwood City, CA (onsite)

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