Product Manager

Wanna join the adventure? Loft's AI for Space group is building the stack that runs real machine learning in orbit; turning raw sensor data into decisions on the satellite itself, so insight reaches the customer in minutes instead of hours. The AI Engineering team is where models meet the spacecraft. We own the full path from a partner's trained model to something that actually runs — fast — on flight hardware: compiling ONNX models into optimized engines for each accelerator, the Space Inference Engine and its execution providers, the SDK that packages models for flight, and the perf tooling that proves a model fits its power, thermal, and latency budget before it ever leaves the ground. As we open the platform to a growing roster of defense and Earth-observation partners, the team's scope and the range of silicon we target are expanding fast.

As our ML Runtime Engineer, you'll own model compilation and the performance tooling behind it. We're looking for someone scrappy — the kind of engineer who takes an unfamiliar model and an unforgiving power budget, digs into the graph, and gets it running on real hardware without waiting for the path to be handed to them. You'll move between model compilation, runtime internals, quantization, and hardware-in-the-loop CI, sometimes in the same afternoon.

Understand what is possible, and turn it into requirements

Spend the bulk of your time with engineering: understanding architectures, constraints, and dependencies well enough to judge what is realistically doable in a given timeframe.

Translate strategic direction into clear requirements and use cases that engineering can act on directly, and follow them down to the Jira tickets.

Surface and shape the good ideas that come from engineering — many of the best ones do — and connect them to a product rationale.

Define success criteria for each capability, and verify they are actually met through implementation and delivery.

Maintain an accurate, shared view of Loft's product capabilities, what is in development, and where the gaps are.

Bring the outside in

Run customer discovery interviews alongside business development, and debrief missions to see how Loft's capabilities are actually used in operations.

Engage directly with the partners building on our platform, including the onboard AI application ecosystem, to understand their needs and constraints.

Track market trends and competitive moves closely enough to know where our offering stands.

Decide and prioritize

Own the roadmap for your perimeter, reconciling customer needs, engineering reality, and Loft's strategy into a single coherent plan.

Build the analysis behind every recommendation — sizing, segmentation, business cases, operational data — so decisions are grounded in evidence rather than intuition alone.

Negotiate scope and delivery commitments with engineering leadership, and re-plan when capacity or mission timelines shift.

Challenge, constructively and with data, business development, engineering leadership, and your own assumptions.

Communicate

Own internal communication on your perimeter: keep engineering, program leadership, and executives working from the same technical reality.

Develop the technical narratives and proof points that marketing and BD then turn into their own customer-facing material.

Prepare recommendations and presentations for top-executive-level audiences.

7+ years of professional experience, including hands-on product management.

Domain experience in at least one of: earth observation, embedded systems, aerospace systems, security & defense.

Comfort at both ends of the spectrum — understand the market, and the technology

Structured and data-driven: you bring your experience and your intuitions, but when you put a recommendation on the table you can show the analysis it stands on.

Real product obsession: you think about the bigger picture and product-market fit before you think about features.

Relentless curiosity. In a single month you might move from a satellite bus constraint, to onboard AI inference, to a defense accreditation requirement — and you need to find that stimulating rather than exhausting.

High autonomy and a bias for action: handed a broad perimeter, you organize it yourself and come back with a plan.

At ease being challenged, and challenging others, in a fast-moving and demanding environment.

Working knowledge of both hardware and software development lifecycles.

Proficient using and configuring Atlassian tools (Jira and Confluence).

Fluency in English, written and spoken.

Willingness to travel to other Loft offices and to customers.

Fluency in French.

Experience with AI/ML products, edge computing, or developer and partner platforms and ecosystems.

Experience with satellite operations, constellation services, or ground segment products.

Exposure to institutional and defense customers and their procurement cycles.

Experience in a fast-growing, entrepreneurial NewSpace company or venture-backed deep-tech startup.

Professional experience working with international teams across time zones.

Equity, we want you to have an active role in our success

Up to 35 days of Paid Time Off (vacations & RTT ) and flexible working hours, we want you to be at your best

Health and life insurance, we care about your health

Lunch Vouchers, because let’s be honest, we love food! (we even have a slack channel about it #loft-gourmand)

Cross-office travel opportunities between San Francisco, Colorado, and Toulouse to learn from our differences

Company and team off-sites and many other events to work & celebrate together

Relocation assistance to Toulouse when applicable

laptop-ats-crawler v2