Senior Product Manager – Space

THE ROLE

Ready to help build the software that gets missions off the ground? We are looking for a Senior Product Manager to own and drive the strategy, roadmap, and growth of Karvel, our on-board software platform for space missions. This is a dual-focus role: you will evolve the product for the satellite teams already using it, while identifying and capturing new market opportunities across in-orbit operations, constellations, space exploration, and human flight. You will work at the intersection of a deep technical engineering team and the agencies and mission operators who depend on this software in high-stakes, time-critical situations, where reliability is non-negotiable. As Karvel scales and evolves, you may be expected to build and lead a larger product team, shaping the product function within the business unit from the ground up. Want to learn more about Karvel? Visit karvel.space. This position is open across our offices in Portugal, Germany, the US, and the UK.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Product Strategy & Roadmap:

• Define and own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap aligned with business objectives and end-user needs.
• Translate space industry standards and operational realities into clearly-defined product requirements to be developed, tested, and maintained.

Discovery & User Research:

• Establish continuous discovery practices with satellite engineering teams and operational users, combining qualitative research and product analytics to uncover latent needs and pain points.
• Benchmark against competitive and adjacent solutions across the flight software and space systems landscape.

Delivery & Execution:

• Partner closely with engineering leads to shape solutions, write clear specifications, prioritize the backlog and drive agile delivery ceremonies, ensuring teams have the context they need to make autonomous, high-quality decisions.
• Define and track product metrics (adoption, integration and qualification time, mission reliability outcomes, customer satisfaction).

Growth & Go-to-Market:

• Collaborate with sales, pre-sales, and business development to support bids, proposals, and technical demonstrations, while identifying expansion opportunities.
• Represent the product at industry events, conferences, and working groups to build visibility and credibility in the space community.

Team Building & Leadership:

• Recruit, mentor, and lead a team of functional analysts and product owners.
• Establish product management best practices, frameworks, and tooling.
• Foster a culture of evidence-based decision-making, user empathy, and outcome orientation.

HOW YOU CAN INSPIRE:

• You adapt fast and turn sharp, critical thinking into good decisions for the project.
• You are genuinely curious and challenge what needs to change and make bold calls.
• You see AI as the biggest shift of this generation and you want to be part of shaping it.
• When there is no map, you start drawing one rather than waiting for someone else to.

ABOUT CRITICAL SOFTWARE:

Every day we work on missions across industries as diverse as aerospace, space, defence, transport, telecoms, government, energy, finance, and healthcare. Building better and safer isn't a slogan. It's how we show up in the world. Critical Software is a proud Benefit Corporation: a for-profit business legally committed to positive impact on society, workers, the community, and the environment — in addition to profit.

We are an equal opportunity workplace. If you need any adjustment in your recruitment process to show us what you can do, please let us know.

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