Product Manager - Customer Facing (German-speaking)

Your mission

As Customer-Facing Product Manager, you will join the team full-time and work directly with our customers in an embedded role. This is a rare role that blends product management and customer success, ideal for someone who wants direct ownership and customer impact. The role is particularly suited for:

• Product Managers who enjoy customer-facing work

• Consultants (ex-McKinsey/Accenture/etc.) who want to move into tech product roles

• Customer Success / Solutions Engineers looking for a career pivot into product

You will have the mandate of solving the toughest customer problems in sales, procurement and order management using software and automation. Specifically this will include:

• Working directly with customers, developing a deep understanding of customer processes, workflows and tools and needs

• Creating deep customer relationships and building trust to ensure you become your customers’ personal tech guru and lead problem solver

• Iteratively developing prototypes with customers that connect Vanilla Steel’s AI applications to customer databases, APIs and workflows to deliver value in terms of speed, automation and insights

• Scoping work and sequencing delivery in consultation with your customers, identifying implementation blockers in collaboration with product & engineering teams

• Working closely with central engineering and product teams to ensure Vanilla Steel product development integrates a strong understanding of your customers’ needs

• Coordinating the operational rollout and integration of new applications within the customer’s technology stack and organization

Your profile

• 2+ years of digital transformation or project management experience in technical deployments including customer-facing work

• Experience scoping and delivering complex systems in fast-moving or ambiguous environments

• First experience in building and deploying systems powered by LLMs or generative models and understanding of how model behaviour affects product experience

• Ability to simplify complexity and make fast, sound decisions under pressure

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English and in German (must have) ; ability to communicate clearly with engineers, product teams, and customer stakeholders

• Ability to work under pressure

• Nice-to-have: Ability to write and review production-grade code across frontend and backend using Python, JavaScript, or comparable stacks

Why us?

• Ownership of projects with a focus on outcomes rather than time-tracking

• Fast-paced yet collaborative culture fostering individual performance and teamwork

• Competitive compensation based on experience

• Regular travel to customer sites across Germany (mainly Central Germany)

• Subsidized Deutschlandticket

• Urban Sport Club membership

• Hybrid work format

• Beautiful office located in the heart of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin

• Regular team building events

About us

The multi-billion-euro metal trading industry is operated on Excel, PDF and Email. We are on a mission to transform buying and selling in one of the oldest industries of the modern world with seamless and intuitive digital solutions. Our technologies increase liquidity, accelerate transactions, reduce scrapping rates and enhance buying convenience for hundreds of steel and metal distributors across Europe.

We are a lean team of young, international, and passionate talents gearing up for the next phase of growth. We are looking for an outstanding individual who wants to join an exciting early stage start-up.