Director Solutions (m/f/d)

Director Solutions (m/f/d) · Stuttgart, with frequent travel to customer sites in Europe and the US · Reports to the CEO · Full-time Who we are Sereact builds the robot brain for physical work. Cortex, our vision-language-action foundation model, is hardware-agnostic: the same model runs single-arm and dual-arm systems and mobile manipulators that pick, sort and handle returns in live production across Europe and the US. Customers include Zalando, IKEA, BMW, Rohlik and DHL. Founded in 2021 in Stuttgart, with an R&D hub in Zurich and a US office in Boston. We have raised more than $145 million, most recently a Series B led by Headline, with Zalando as a strategic investor. We work in small, senior teams with a flat structure; execution counts more than titles. Why this role, why now A robot deal is won twice: once when the contract is signed, and once when the cell runs the customer’s orders at the throughput we promised. The distance between the two is decided before anyone unpacks a crate: by the site survey, the item spectrum, the cell concept, the integration with the customer’s warehouse systems, and by the number we write into the contract. We are moving from single stations to fleets, with customers who order dozens of systems at once. The deals are getting larger, the sites more varied, and a concept that does not fit the site is paid for in months of commissioning. We are looking for the technical counterpart to our sales team: a leader who sits next to every account executive from the first conversation and makes deals technically feasible. Someone who has deployed robots personally, knows what a real site does to a design, finds the solution that makes the customer’s use case work, and makes sure what we promise is what we can build. The Real-World Learning Loop starts with your design Cortex learns from live deployments. The cell you design is the body the model works in, and a concept that goes live in weeks instead of months is weeks of real-world data no one else has. • In-Situ Policy Execution. Every station runs the current policy on the customer’s items. Your surface on it: reach, camera placement and item presentation that let the policy do its job on day one. • Continuous Data Acquisition. Robots annotate their own work while they run. Your surface on it: standard cells with a known stack wherever possible, so every pick teaches the same model. • Data Curation and Learning. Edge cases decide what Cortex learns next. Your surface on it: the item spectrum and the sample tests you run before signature, so curation starts before go-live. • Evaluation and Policy Redeployment. Updated policies return to the fleet after validation. Your surface on it: concepts that transfer, so a policy proven on one cell works on the next. A site designed right goes live faster, teaches Cortex more, and grows. Responsibilities • Be Sales’ technical counterpart on every deal. One solutions lead next to every account executive, from the first customer conversation to signature. Your job is to make the deal technically feasible: understand the customer’s process, find the solution that works for their site and items, and give Sales a technical story the customer’s engineers believe. • Own the technical solution for every deal, from the first site visit to the signed scope: site survey, process and material-flow analysis, item spectrum, cell concept and layout, reach and camera study, integration concept for WMS, WCS and conveyors, safety concept. One package per deal, and you are accountable for it. • Set the number. Throughput, pick success and intervention rates we commit to per site, derived from the item spectrum and the site and checked against what comparable live sites actually do. No KPI goes into a contract without your sign-off. • Standard first. Configure our standard single-arm, dual-arm and mobile products to the site. Every deviation is a documented decision taken with Engineering, not a discovery during installation. • Run the gate. No contract is signed without your solution design sign-off and a delivery slot agreed with Operations. You hold the pen on the technical statement of work, the acceptance criteria and the site-readiness list the customer has to meet. • Make it feasible, fast. Sample tests, pick studies and scanning or dimensioning checks with our applied AI team, within days, not months. When a requirement does not fit, find the version that does: a different cell or item presentation, a phased scope, a pilot that proves the hard part first. A no is the last answer, not the first. • Hand over to Deployment a package that builds: layout, configuration, integration spec, acceptance criteria, risks and dates, so commissioning executes without reopening the concept. You stay accountable until the first live orders prove the design. • Own the interfaces to integrators and WMS vendors at the solution level, from AutoStore and goods-to-person systems to conveyor and WMS partners: interface specs, a clear split of responsibilities and readiness tests before we ship. • Build the solution library: reference designs per use case (goods-to-person ports, put walls, returns, decanting, store replenishment), throughput models, layout templates and integration patterns, so the tenth deal of a kind takes a day, not a month. • Close the loop from the field. What commissioning and live sites learn about a design flows back into the reference concepts and into requirements for Product and Engineering. • Lead the big pursuits in person: the technical counterpart to the customer’s engineering and operations teams in fleet deals, tenders and RFPs; demos and reference visits with the customer’s real items. • Build and lead the Solutions team in Europe and the US: solutions engineers who have stood at a cell, with the playbooks and tools (CAD, simulation, throughput models) to do this at ten times today’s deal flow. • Partner with Sales, Operations and Deployment, Service Accounts, Systems Engineering, Applied AI and Supply Chain. Report to the CEO and be part of the leadership team. Not in scope, by design • Pricing, contract terms and closing stay with Sales. You are their technical counterpart: you own what we promise technically, how we make it work and when it can be delivered. • Build, installation and commissioning up to the Site Acceptance Test stay with Operations. You hand over a package that builds, and you stay accountable for the concept. • Live sites after acceptance stay with Service Accounts. You design for the site they will have to run. • Product and system design stay with Engineering and New Product Introduction. You configure the standard; what the standard lacks, you bring them as requirements. What makes this role hard • Your job is to find the yes we can deliver. Most of the time that means a smarter solution, sometimes a different scope or a later date, and occasionally a no to a deal the company wants. When it is a no, you have to be right about it, with numbers. • The product moves fast: what the model could not do in spring it may do in autumn. You commit to today’s capability and plan for tomorrow’s, and you do not confuse the two. • The site is never finished. WMS, conveyors, bins and item master data belong to the customer or an integrator, and your design has to survive their reality. • Every shortcut in the concept comes back as months of commissioning. You carry both sides of that trade, in front of Sales and in front of Deployment. Your first 12 months • First 90 days: every open deal has a solution package and a realistic commitment; the gate is in place (checklist, sign-off, delivery slot); every live site’s concept reviewed for what we would design differently today. • By month 6: reference designs for our three main use cases; a throughput model validated against live sites; interface specifications agreed with our three most important integration partners; the first solutions engineer in the US onboarded. • By month 12: deals signed in 2027 go live at the throughput in the concept, without redesign; a Solutions team in Europe and the US; a library that makes the standard deal routine. What you bring • 8+ years in warehouse or factory automation, several of them in solutions, application engineering or deployment of robotic systems. You have personally deployed robots in live operations, from site survey to commissioning: piece-picking arms, dual-arm cells, mobile manipulators or AMR fleets. You know what a go-live night feels like. • You did it while your company grew from its first sites to dozens or hundreds, and you built the solution process rather than inheriting it. • You can do the work yourself: a site survey, a layout in CAD, a material-flow and throughput model, an interface specification for a WMS or WCS (APIs, PLC handshakes), a risk assessment for a cell. And you can explain it to a customer’s operations director and to our machine learning engineers in the same afternoon. • You have worked side by side with sales teams as their technical counterpart and helped win deals by finding a solution that works. You have led solutions or application engineers, and when a sales team pushed for a bigger number, you held the line with evidence. • You know the intralogistics ecosystem: AutoStore and goods-to-person systems, conveyors, the integrators; ideally e-commerce, returns or grocery fulfilment. • Fluent English; German is a strong plus, since many of our customers are in the DACH region. You are happy to spend a large part of your time at customer sites in Europe and the US. Nice to have: piece-picking or dual-arm robotics · systems whose capability is driven by machine learning and moves every quarter · robotics-as-a-service models · deployments in the US. Not the right fit: pre-sales architects who have never commissioned a system, solutions as slide-making, or anyone who needs a finished product specification before they can start. Three questions we will ask you • Walk us through a site you designed that went live at the throughput you promised, and one that did not. What was the difference? • Sales wants to sign a deal this quarter with a KPI 50% above what your model says the site can do. What do you do in the next 48 hours to still make the deal work? • A customer’s goods-to-person ports are fixed, and the layout leaves 30 cm less reach than our standard cell needs. What are the options, and which one do you choose? What we offer • A product in live production with some of Europe’s largest operators, and the mandate to decide what we promise and what we build. • A seat in the leadership team of a company scaling from Europe into the US, with equity. • Travel, accommodation and meals covered when you are on site. • Our HQ in Stuttgart, with teams in Zurich and Boston. How we hire Conversations with the founders and our VP Operations, a working session on a real site (we give you a layout, an item spectrum and a target; you tell us what to build and what to promise), and time with the team in Stuttgart. We move fast. 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