Head of Product Preferred starting date: ASAP Weekly availability: Full-time (40 hours/week) Location: Delft, the Netherlands (hybrid
Report to: CEO About the company Fiducial is a young but fast-growing deep-tech start-up with big ambitions at the frontier of autonomy, perception, and defence. Currently, we are developing software for advanced on-board UAV situational awareness in military applications. Using low-cost and widely available sensors and compute, our solutions are built for scalability. From there, we plan to develop a line-up of interconnected solutions to safeguard European safety. Our team consists of engineers that are passionate about the technology and solutions they develop. The only time most of us are not thinking about the technology is when we are asleep, and sometimes even then. Our team members have a background in different fields such as Aerospace Engineering, Computational Science and Engineering, Robotics and Computer Graphics. Our office is located in the Aerospace Innovation Hub, a start-up hub located on the TU Delft campus in the faculty of Aerospace Engineering. We work closely with top-tier partners, ranging from government agencies and prime contractors to academic research institutes and other start-ups. Our projects span from large tender orders in collaboration with partners to low TRL research with government agencies. Whether through formal R&D programs or rapid prototyping tracks, we operate at the intersection of innovation and deployment. Your role As Head of Product, you own our product hands-on. You are the bridge between what the market and our operators need and what we build, turning field feedback and market insight into a clear roadmap and products people actually want to use. You own how our capabilities become real products: how they are shaped, packaged, priced, taken to market, and adopted by the people who use them in the field. This is a hands-on, roll-up-your-sleeves role, not a purely strategic one. You set the product’s direction together with the founders, and you do the work to make it happen: talking to users, writing requirements, prioritizing the backlog, and working day-to-day with engineering to ship. You bring structure to how we do product without turning it into bureaucracy. You will work closely with the founders, engineering, and commercial. The company strategy is set with the founders; your job is to own the product within it and make it succeed. Your responsibilities will include • Product strategy & roadmap. Owning the product roadmap and prioritization, and keeping the product direction aligned with the company strategy as the market and the technology evolve. • Market-to-technical bridge. Translating operator needs, market signals, and partner requirements into clear, well-scoped work for engineering, and translating technical capability back into value the market understands. • Hands-on product delivery. Writing requirements, shaping features, prioritizing the backlog, and working day-to-day with engineering to get things shipped and validated. • Product portfolio. Helping shape how our capabilities in detection, navigation, interception, and beyond fit together as a modular, scalable line-up rather than isolated tools. • User experience & adoption. Owning how usable our products are for end users: ease of use, onboarding, training, documentation, and the adoption path from first deployment to routine operational use. • Pricing & business model. Contributing to pricing, packaging, and business models across the product line-up, and owning the product side of the classic marketing mix (the 4Ps). • Go-to-market. Partnering with commercial and business development on go-to-market for each capability, from positioning and narrative to capability briefs and demos. • Market intelligence. Keeping an eye on the market: trends, competitors, adjacent opportunities, and where the next product bets should be. • Regulatory & compliance awareness. Given the defence context, factoring export control, procurement, and relevant standards into product decisions, working with the right internal and external stakeholders. • Lightweight product practices. Bringing just enough structure, process, and documentation to make product work repeatable, suited to a fast-moving deep-tech company. What you will deliver in your first year • A clear, documented product roadmap, aligned with the founders and understood across the company. • A working feedback loop that turns field and operational insight into product decisions. • Well-scoped, prioritized work flowing to engineering, with product shipped and validated with users. • Input into pricing and business-model choices for the core product lines. • A joint go-to-market plan with commercial for at least one capability, taken through to execution. • Measurable improvement in product adoption and usability through better onboarding, documentation, and training for operators and partners. • A working market map that informs the next set of product bets. What we expect from you • 5+ years in product management, with a track record of owning a product’s roadmap and shipping it in a technical product environment. • Experience in a startup or scale-up environment: comfortable with ambiguity, limited resources, and wearing several hats. • A strong bridge-builder: you connect customers and market reality to engineering, and you are comfortable in deeply technical conversations without being the engineer yourself. • A genuinely hands-on mindset: you want to talk to users, write requirements, and work day-to-day with engineering, not only set direction from a distance. • Exposure to pricing, packaging, and business-model decisions (the product side of the 4Ps). • Experience working with commercial teams on go-to-market. • A user-obsessed attitude: you care about adoption, usability, training, and documentation, not only features. • The ability to read a market, spot trends, and turn them into concrete product opportunities. • Strong communication and stakeholder skills, from the field and the shop floor to founders, partners, and government stakeholders. Nice to have • Domain experience in defence, drones/UAV, aerospace, or other dual-use or high-stakes technology. A real plus, but not a must. • Experience navigating regulated environments and their impact on product, such as export control, procurement, certification, or standards. • Experience as an early or first dedicated product hire, setting up lightweight product practices from scratch. We know this exact combination is rare. If you have a strong track record of building products that reached real users, and the hands-on drive and judgment to navigate the rest, we want to talk. What we offer • The chance to own the product of a deep-tech defence company from an early stage, working directly with the founders. • Equity participation. We want the people building the company to share in it. • Competitive compensation. • 25 vacation days per year. • Reimbursed travel expenses and company laptop. • (Really) flexible working hours, with a hybrid setup around our Delft office. • Working in an international, world-class team of engineers and entrepreneurs solving real-life problems with technology that matters. • Real ownership, fast iteration, and tight feedback loops, and the chance to see what you build deployed in environments where it genuinely counts. The application procedure • If after reading the above you are convinced you are the right person for the job, send us some information about yourself. This can be a resume, LinkedIn, or other source, as long as we get a clear picture of your background and track record. • We'll get back to you as soon as possible. If we see a potential fit, we'll set up an initial conversation, followed by deeper sessions with the founders and the team where we work through real product scenarios together. • If at this point we feel you are the person we are looking for, we'll discuss the specifics. • Welcome to the team!