Head of Hardware

About algo1

algo1 is an AI-native platform for retail, built to transform the in-store shopping experience through real-time personalisation and behavioural science. Founded by Simon Franks (LoveFilm, Redbus) and backed by leading venture investors, we are a team of around 40 people building from our London office.

Our customers are retailers and our product is used everyday by their shoppers in their stores. That means our hardware lives in a demanding consumer environment and must be consumer-grade in every sense: robust enough for constant real-world use and beautiful enough to capture shoppers' attention and drive interaction.

The Role

Our ambition is to bring AI, interface, and hardware together into one unified, stunning, low-cost solution. We are hiring a full-time Hardware Product Manager to own that hardware end to end, from early prototypes through to large-scale deployment.

You will work alongside our Head of Product (B2C) and Head of Product (B2B), who own the software and the two sides of the experience. You will own the physical product that brings that experience to life.

You will also work in close partnership with our Chief Innovation Officer and Engineering team based in Pakistan, giving you real technical firepower behind the hardware.

What You Will Own

• The hardware product end to end, from today's early units through retail trials and into large-scale deployment.

• Sourcing and supplier strategy: manufacturer selection, sourcing and management.

• Supply chain scaling, including certification, production ramp-up, logistics, and successful deployment into retail environments.

• External design partners: You will brief, select, and direct industrial design and engineering contractors.

• The supply chain ramp: certification, production scale-up, logistics and getting devices into stores ready to work.

• The central challenge of the role: delivering consumer-grade quality and a premium finish while maintaining low cost and scalability.

What We Are Looking For

• You have taken a physical product from prototype through EVT/DVT/PVT into mass production, ideally past 100,000 units.

• You have delivered hardware products by coordinating external designers, engineering firms, and manufacturers rather than relying on a large in-house team.

• You have sourced and managed ODM and contract manufacturing relationships and successfully navigated supply chain disruptions.

• You have built consumer-grade products for demanding environments such as retail, payments, logistics, mobility, or other high-usage settings. Drop testing, durability requirements, ingress protection, and cleaning regimes are familiar territory.

• You default to commoditised components over custom engineering, and can point to examples where that approach reduced cost, risk, or time to market.

• You are comfortable being the hardware authority inside a fast-moving AI software company.

What You Get

• You will have the opportunity to work directly with the founders and your two product leader peers with the autonomy to define and execute our hardware strategy rather than inherit one.

• Our teams are based out of our London office predominantly. We build together, in person.

• A competitive package.

• The chance to build something from scratch in a category that is ready to be redefined.

If you have shipped consumer products that people use, abuse, and rely on every day and they keep working, we would like to hear from you.