Product Manager, HRI (Human Robot Interaction)

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)