Lead Project Engineer - Customer Facing

This role is hybrid and required in office on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Hey, we're Glacier! A Series A startup based in San Francisco tackling one of the world's most pressing problems: trash. Did you know that in the US, we send over half of our recyclables to the landfill? We're working to fix that. In doing so, we'll also be reducing carbon emissions, energy consumption, and depletion of natural resources.

Glacier builds custom sorting robots designed to sort apart recyclables as well as AI-powered business analytics that enable recyclers to superpower their plants and improve our society's circularity.

From major CPG companies like Colgate and Amazon to municipal recycling facilities, our clients trust us to turn recycling data into actionable insights. Our technology has been recognized as one of TIME's Best Inventions and featured in a TIME documentary, TechCrunch, Fortune, and CBS.

We're looking for a talented Lead Project Engineer to own robot projects end-to-end, from sales support through customer acceptance, ensuring a seamless experience for our customers and maximizing environmental impact.

Key Responsibilities:

Drive the entire project lifecycle as Glacier's technical representative, from sales support through customer acceptance, managing a wide variety of stakeholders and timelines with many interdependencies. Specific duties include:

• Sales support: Partner with sales team to propose install locations that balance customer needs with Glacier’s technical capabilities

• Customer management: Lead customer meetings and act as the main technical liaison with the customer throughout the project process ensuring clear communication and high satisfaction.

• Scheduling and coordination: Develop project schedules, track milestones, and lead coordination between internal teams and external partners to ensure seamless execution.

• Stakeholder and customer communication: Serve as the central point of contact for project updates, ensuring clear communication of goals, responsibilities, and progress to cross-functional teams and our customers.

• Team project management and collaboration: Lead and support cross-functional teams, fostering collaboration and alignment across all phases of the project lifecycle from sales support through customer kickoff, manufacturing, installation, and customer acceptance testing while resolving competing priorities.

• Implementation: Participate in on-site installation and calibration of robot as the main customer liaison

• Long-term deployment process improvements: Continue to refine, optimize, and document Glacier’s robot deployment and ops project management strategies and processes to ensure an on-time deployment each time.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or equivalent experience preferred plus 5 years of professional experience, including at least 5 years of experience in project management and 2 years of experience working with customers as the main point of contact

• Experience in leading complex projects, including customer and project management, risk mitigation, timeline coordination, and project installation

• Hands on experience with hardware products, including evaluating technical tradeoffs; bonus points if it’s in the robotics or manufacturing spaces

• Ability to travel and work on-site up to 20% of the time (up to 2 weeks at a time, typically for initial deployment or sales support), including nights and weekends

• Experience with 3D CAD

• Ability to work from our San Francisco office at least two days each week

• Self-starter mentality; you will be responsible for defining and managing major project timelines with little guidance, and finding creative ways to resolve a variety of potential project obstacles.

Compensation:

The total cash compensation range for this role is $150,000 - $175,000. In addition to cash compensation, Glacier also offers competitive equity compensation and benefits. The final compensation for this role will depend on many individualized factors, including job-related skills and knowledge, experience level, interview performance, and other factors.

Why Join Us?

• Mission-Driven Work – Be part of a company dedicated to sustainability and ending waste, with technology recognized as one of TIME's Best Inventions.

• Cross-Functional Impact – Lead high-stakes projects where your decisions directly shape customer success and environmental outcomes.

• Hands-On Robotics Deployment – Get boots on the ground at recycling facilities, managing real robot installations that divert tons of waste from landfills every day.

• Fast-Paced Growth – Join at a pivotal moment as we scale our fleet from production to nationwide deployments, with robust pipeline ahead.

• Backed to Succeed – Our founders bring experience from Facebook and Bain, and we're supported by top-tier investors with deep technical and industry expertise.

If you're excited about leading complex hardware deployments, collaborating across technical and business teams, and making a tangible environmental impact through robotics, we'd love to hear from you!