Product Manager - Preclinical Device
About this role
Location: London, with occasional travel.
About Netholabs
Netholabs builds large-scale neural and behavioural recording platforms to generate the data needed for the next generation of brain models. We operate two recording platforms: a preclinical ethological monitoring system integrated with behaviour and neural data and a human motion-capture and neurophysiology platform. We are a small, fast-moving team where hardware, neuroscience, and ML sit in the same room.
The Role
We are building integrated human motion-capture and neurophysiological recording systems for both controlled lab studies and naturalistic, in-the-wild data collection. Today we have working prototypes. We need someone to turn them into products - reproducible, manufacturable, remotely updatable systems that can be deployed at scale and maintained without an engineer in the room.
You will own R&D delivery across the London lab and hardware programme: co-developing the hardware with our electronics and mechanical engineers, importing and enforcing best-practice data capture protocols, and engaging contract manufacturers to scale. This is an agentic, hands-on role -with support engineer roles as required. You will spend as much time in the lab and on the phone with suppliers as you will in a spec document.
What you'll do
Take working prototypes to shippable, field-deployable systems — define the product, own the roadmap, and drive it to delivery
Specify and build out over-the-air update infrastructure: firmware, versioning, rollback, fleet management, remote diagnostics
Own the design-for-manufacture transition — DFM/DFA reviews, BOM ownership, tolerancing, test fixtures, and production test protocols
Identify, qualify, and manage contract manufacturers and suppliers; own the relationship from RFQ through NPI to sustained production
Establish and enforce best-practice data capture protocols across modalities (EEG, fNIRS, EMG, pupillometry, motion capture, video) so that data quality is consistent across sessions, operators, and sites
Define the requirements that make in-the-wild collection viable: wearability, session setup time, robustness, battery life, and unattended operation
Work directly with our electronics, mechanical, firmware, and neuroscience teams to translate research needs into hardware requirements — and push back when a requirement doesn't survive contact with manufacturing
Build the quality, documentation, and regulatory groundwork (design history, ISO 13485-style discipline, CE/UKCA pathway) appropriate to a research-device product
Contribute to the industrialisation of our rodent recording platform where the manufacturing and OTA problems overlap
What we're looking for
Essential
Min 3+ years (ideal 7+) in hardware product management, product engineering, or programme management, with several products you personally took from prototype to volume manufacture
Direct, demonstrable experience with contract manufacturers: you have run RFQs, sat through NPI builds, argued about yield, and fixed a production line problem from 6,000 miles away
Deep understanding of connected-device architecture: OTA update mechanisms, device provisioning, telemetry, fleet management, and what it costs to get these wrong
Fluency across electronics, mechanical, and firmware enough to hold a real technical conversation with each - you don't need to design the board, but you need to know when the answer you're getting is wrong
Track record of writing specifications and protocols that people actually follow
Comfort with ambiguity and a small-company reality: no PMO, no roadmap tooling team, no one to delegate the boring parts to
Strongly preferred
Experience with wearable, biosignal, or medical device hardware
Familiarity with human research data collection — protocols, participant handling, IRB/ethics, GDPR and special-category data
Experience shipping a product to CE/UKCA or FDA pathway
Background in neuroscience, biomedical engineering, or a related field
Experience with multi-sensor time synchronisation and the data infrastructure behind it
What we offer
Direct ownership of a product line at a company small enough that your decisions ship
Equity in an early-stage company building foundational infrastructure for brain modelling
A team of neuroscientists and engineers doing genuinely novel work
Central London lab, on-site, with access to the Sussex rodent facility
To apply: send a CV and a short note about a product you took from prototype to manufacture what broke, and what you did about it.
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