Hardware Product Manager
Overview
At Okra Solar, we’re on a mission to bring Power to the People by unlocking opportunities through energy access for everyone in the world.
Over 650 million people still live without electricity. At a time where technology such as mobile devices, productive agritech and AI are becoming more accessible than ever, we believe that access to energy is the first step toward opportunity and growth.
That’s why we build our Mesh Grid technology that energizes off-grid households at a fraction of the cost of the other solutions. We build the hardware and software, that we sell to local energy companies who deploy our tech to deliver affordable, reliable electricity as a service last-mile communities.
In order to execute on the mission to 100% energy access for all - we are looking for an experienced and hardware product manager to work alongside our team in Porto and ensure we can design and scale several hardware electronics products in some of the hardest to reach parts of the world.
If you’re excited about owning real hardware (cost, quality, failures and all) to create tangible impact and want to help shape the future of energy access, you could be the right person to join us.
Responsibilities
We want a Product Manager who understands electronics to a fairly deep technical level, and can communicate confidently with vendors and engineers about requirements, design tradeoffs and market trends. We also want someone who champions the best practices of Product Management related to product feedback, communication, and customer/stakeholder engagement. Your job will be to own hardware, potentially at varying stages of maturity and complexity, to drive a plan for increased quality, cost reduction, adding needed features, and innovating to keep us at our current market-leading position in Mesh Grid technology.
- Product requirements: interpret and translate customer/regulatory/commercial needs into functional requirements and collaborate with engineering to translate into technical requirements
- Making tradeoffs, managing risks, prioritising and executing the vision for the products you manage
- Specifically navigating the pressures from engineering, supply chain and commercial and communicate clearly and proactively to all stakeholders
- Bring a de-risking, cost-down, reliability, DFM, and scalability mindset from the get-go
- Accountable for quality and field performance, define failure/warranty KPIs, lead failure analysis efforts
- Own target cost, BOM strategy, and margin assumptions
- Work daily with hardware, firmware, manufacturing, supply chain, QA, and customer teams and build strong relationships
- Gather feedback from customers, internal teams, and stakeholders to iterate on product features and enhancements, demonstrating a proactive approach to continuous improvement.
- Ensure market-specific regulatory/safety/certification requirements are aligned on and met
Required Skills
We are looking for someone who has skills in some, if not all of these areas:
- >5+ years in hardware product management, ideally in power electronics, energy systems, embedded, consumer hardware, or industrial IoT
- Experience in early-stage companies, startups, or fast-moving environments
- Experience with volume manufacturing - yields, qualification criteria, supported on technical negotiations and supplier selection, ODM/OEM engagement
- Product fundamentals - clear, testable requirement docs, roadmaps, milestones, feature releases
- Decision making experience, especially in uncertainty - making tough decisions based on imperfect data, juggle tradeoffs across competing forces, evaluate and owning risk, comfortable saying no
- Strategic intuition - understanding how the industry landscape is evolving, how the product can be positioned
- Leadership and Communication - Ability to not only make the tradeoffs but communicate them effectively with data, inspire confidence and trust, give people clarity and be able to guide discussions effectively
- Ability to use basic hand tools and test measurement equipment - should be comfortable pulling apart a product
Nice-to-Have
- Experience in off-grid/rural or emerging markets, especially the solar energy sector
- Experience manufacturing in China
- Bachelor degree in relevant engineering or science field (e.g. electrical, mechanical, telecom, physics), however we put more value on your real-world experience
Benefits At Okra
🕒 Flexible Location & Hours
📈 Professional Growth
🛡️ We’ve Got You Covered
🌴 Unlimited Paid Time Off
🌈 Dynamic & Diverse Workplace
🍼 Flexible Parental Leave
Process Timeline
More About Okra
Over 650 million people still live without electricity. At a time where technology such as mobile devices, productive agritech and AI are becoming more accessible than ever, we believe that access to energy is the first step toward opportunity and growth.
That’s why we built Mesh-Grid technology that energizes off-grid households at a fraction of the cost of traditional off-grid energy solutions. We supply the tech we specialize in to local energy companies, who go out and deliver affordable, reliable energy to last mile communities.
Okra is currently in its high-growth phase, after raising over $11M for our Series A in 2023 from our investors At One Ventures, FMO, Autodesk, King Philanthropies and Susquehanna. We have rolled out multiple Mesh Grid projects across Africa, Southeast Asia and Central America, but in order for us to achieve our mission of 100% electrification, we need to continue engineering and deploying disruptive energy access technology at scale, so this is an exciting time for everyone!
