Principal Product Manager, Catalysis

About SandboxAQ

SandboxAQ is a high-growth company delivering AI solutions that address some of the world's greatest challenges. The company’s Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) power advances in life sciences, financial services, navigation, cybersecurity, and other sectors.

We are a global team that is tech-focused and includes experts in AI, chemistry, cybersecurity, physics, mathematics, medicine, engineering, and other specialties. The company emerged from Alphabet Inc. as an independent, growth capital-backed company in 2022, funded by leading investors and supported by a braintrust of industry leaders.

At SandboxAQ, we’ve cultivated an environment that encourages creativity, collaboration, and impact. By investing deeply in our people, we’re building a thriving, global workforce poised to tackle the world's epic challenges. Join us to advance your career in pursuit of an inspiring mission, in a community of like-minded people who value entrepreneurialism, ownership, and transformative impact.

The Opportunity

SandboxAQ’s AI Simulation (AISim) division develops and applies Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) that are grounded in physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology to simulate molecular behavior with scientific precision and accelerate discovery in the physical world across biopharma, chemicals, advanced materials, healthcare, and so much more.

Within AISim, ChemSim is SandboxAQ's AI-driven materials discovery platform. We are seeking an exceptional Product Manager to own the Catalysis vertical. This is a dual-mandate role. In the near term, you will be the product owner for catalysis within SandboxAQ's $500M CHIPS Act R&D award from the U.S. Department of Commerce, translating contractual objectives into product requirements and external fulfilment, whilst partnering with Program Managers to ensure successful milestone delivery. In parallel, you will build the commercial foundation that turns catalysis from a government-funded R&D workstream into a product-led business generating durable, recurring revenue from the broader materials and process-chemistry market.

Catalysis is one of the largest and most consequential application areas in applied chemistry. It underpins refining and downstream oil and gas, commodity and petrochemical production, emissions control, and the energy transition (hydrogen electrolysis, carbon utilization, e-fuels and chemical recycling etc) alongside semiconductor process chemistry and fine chemical synthesis. Across nearly all of these markets the bottleneck is the same: catalyst discovery and optimization remain slow, experimental and expensive, and the simulation tools available today answer narrower questions than the ones that actually decide a process. This is a once-in-a-career opportunity to shape a category-defining AI platform for materials science at the intersection of national security, scientific discovery, and commercial scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end Catalysis product strategy, vision and roadmap, spanning CHIPS Act contractual deliverables, vertical scientific depth, and commercial expansion into new markets.

• Build a deep understanding of customer needs by working closely with Application Scientists and the Business Development team. Synthesize field insights, application benchmarking data, and market feedback into a clear picture of customer personas, and performance drivers, and translate these into prioritized product requirements and specifications.

• Translate the program's catalysis objectives into clear product requirements, a vertical roadmap, and the evidence packages required for Fulfillment Notices to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

• Define the dataset and model requirements for the vertical, chemical coverage, fidelity, and the benchmarking that determines where simulation investment is directed in partnership with our scientific and ML teams.

• Drive the roadmap from property and energetics prediction toward reaction-level modelling, so that predictions can be validated against a customer's own process rather than assessed in isolation.

• Quantify the value our catalyst products and services create for customers, such as gains in yield, selectivity, catalyst life, energy efficiency, and emissions. Equip Go-to-Market, Application Science, and Business Development teams with compelling value propositions, value models, and commercialization strategies that help them turn that technical performance into revenue, market share, and long-term customer partnerships.

• Contribute to the catalysis commercial strategy with commercial leadership: customer segmentation, scope of offer, packaging, and pricing model across semiconductor, refining and petrochemical, emissions control and energy-transition customers.

• Build, manage, and own strategic partner relationships at the product level: Work with fabs and equipment OEMs, precursor and specialty materials suppliers, refiners and chemical producers, catalyst manufacturers, national laboratories and validation partners, translating partner requirements into product features.

• Define and track strategic product and commercial KPIs: Manage the metrics that matter most including, Model accuracy requirements, workflow adoption, customer segment expansion, and recurring revenue growth , and drive course corrections against OKRs.

• Develop and defend build-vs-buy and build-vs-partner recommendations for domain-specific scientific engines, datasets and validation tooling.

• Serve as the primary product voice for catalysis to program stakeholders, semiconductor ecosystem partners, and prospective commercial customers.

• Define which parts of the roadmap are shared capability across end markets and which are market-specific, so that expansion compounds the product rather than fragmenting it.

Essential Skills & Experience

• 5+ years in product management, including ownership of a technically deep product sold to external customers. Must be able to operate in a product capacity within business models that are software and service oriented

• Strong domain grounding in materials science, catalysis, chemistry, or chemical engineering. Enough knowledge to sufficiently and credibly engage computational scientists, experimental validation partners, and domain SMEs.

• Track record shipping AI/ML-driven scientific or engineering software to external, paying or contracted users; and shipping products where the ICP was not clearly understood or demand generation and funnel was not already in place.

• Experience contributing to scope of offer, packaging and pricing decisions for technical software, or clear evidence of the commercial instinct to do so.

• Ability to engage both computational scientists and industrial, refining, chemical or equipment OEM partners, and to turn partner requirements into product requirements.

• Ability to reason commercially across multiple end markets at once, sizing opportunities, comparing them on evidence, and sequencing entry rather than pursuing all of them simultaneously.

• Comfort navigating deep ambiguity: translating unclear scientific and customer problems into structured roadmaps, success criteria, and measurable outcomes.

• Has an ownership mindset, and a rigorous operational execution track record.

• Bachelor's degree in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering or Materials Science or equivalent practical experience.

Highly Desired Skills & Experience

• Experience in one or more major catalysis end markets, refining and downstream, petrochemicals and commodity chemicals, emissions control, or energy-transition catalysis such as electrolysis, carbon utilization, e-fuels or chemical recycling.

• Familiarity with computational chemistry workflows such as density functional theory (DFT), molecular dynamics, or microkinetic modelling, and the judgement to evaluate technical feasibility and roadmap trade-offs.

• Semiconductor or electronic materials process chemistry experience (e.g. deposition, etch, wafer cleaning, gas abatement etc).

• Familiarity with homogeneous or solution-phase catalysis alongside heterogeneous surface chemistry, and a view on where each approach applies.

• Understanding of machine-learned interatomic potentials, spin polarization in transition-metal systems, and the evaluation of ML models against experimental or first-principles reference data.

• Track record building product-led growth motions for technical or scientific software, including self-serve adoption and land-and-expand commercial models.

• Prior product or business development engagement with catalyst manufacturers, chemical producers, refiners, or semiconductor ecosystem partners such as fabs, equipment OEMs and precursor suppliers.

• Experience with multi-tenant SaaS, API governance, and enterprise security and compliance requirements.

• An advanced degree in Computational Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Catalysis, Materials Science, or a related field.

Why Join Us?

We offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package designed to support your health, financial well-being, and life outside of work.

• Career Defining Work: Your work will directly accelerate the discovery of better drugs and better materials, advance human health, and enable safer and more sustainable technologies by helping customers put AI Simulation capabilities into real world use.

• Compensation: Competitive base salary, performance-based incentives or bonuses (where applicable), and equity participation.

• Benefits: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents with generous employer premium contributions, retirement savings with company matching, paid parental leave, and inclusive family-building benefits.

• Work-Life Balance: Fully remote, Flexible paid time off, company-wide seasonal breaks, and support for flexible work arrangements that enable sustainable performance.

• Learning and Growth: Opportunities for continuous learning and growth through on-the-job development, cross-functional collaboration, and access to internal learning and development programs.

SandboxAQ Welcomes All

We are committed to fostering a culture of belonging and respect, where diverse perspectives are actively sought and valued. Our multidisciplinary environment provides ample opportunity for continuous growth - working alongside humble, empowered, and ambitious colleagues ready to tackle epic challenges.

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status.

Accommodations: We provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities in job application procedures for open roles. If you need such an accommodation, please let a member of our Recruiting team know.

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