Business Development Manager - Robotics and Edge AI

$186K - $256K San Jose, CA, US Mid Level AI Product Manager

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About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

AI is rapidly moving beyond research labs and into the real world—powering advancements in vehicles, factories, hospitals, homes, and everyday devices. NXP’s Global Sales organization is the force that transforms our intelligent edge vision into meaningful market impact. We operate on the front lines of innovation, delivering real\-world AI, secure edge intelligence, and breakthrough technologies to the customers shaping tomorrow’s world. As a strategic partner at the intersection of customer ambition and NXP capability, our global sales team drives alignment, opens new markets, and builds the relationships that lead to design wins and revenue growth. Through deep market insight and long\-term collaboration, we embed customer\-centricity into every decision and help accelerate innovation at the system\-solution level. This disciplined, client\-first mindset enables us to architect integrated, future\-ready solutions that deliver sustained value and strengthen NXP’s competitive advantage. We thrive in a high\-performance, high\-ownership environment—competing boldly, executing with urgency, and celebrating results. If you want to win big, grow fast, and work with the customers building what’s next, NXP Global Sales is where ambition becomes achievement.

As an NXP Business Development Manager covering Robotics and Edge AI applications, you will be responsible for driving and executing the Go\-To\-Market (GTM) strategy for all technologies within NXP portfolio to penetrate the next wave of Robotics. You will take the lead in shaping solutions for the AMEC region through discovery and investigation with start\-up companies, target accounts, mass market/distribution, and key ecosystem partners to help create a compelling value proposition that aligns the Americas growth strategy. With your knowledge and expertise, you will cultivate pre\-sales design wins, influence roadmaps, and lay the foundation for a 3\-5 year growth trajectory in a quickly evolving landscape.

Primary Responsibilities:

  • Uncover new use cases and opportunities within Edge AI driven emerging markets or companies, including robotics, that can be proliferate across multiple accounts
  • Understand customer problem statements, assist in the creation of potential solutions (including value proposition), and deploy these use cases into key customers
  • Recognize, develop, and support key ecosystem partners (module providers and reference designs) to drive faster adoption of NXP solutions and enable disruptive business growth
  • Consolidate key technical requirements for this market and contribute to defining product roadmaps to win future designs in this market as well as other emerging markets
  • Train and enable field sales and customer application support (CAS) teams on the new ecosystem, strategy, and target applications to enhance technical skills needed to design\-in NXP’s solutions
  • Deliver executable market/competitor insights and analysis to the business lines as well as the global sales and marketing organization (GSM)
  • Actively manage both external and internal stakeholders including relationships within the business lines and the Americas account teams
  • Master a solid understanding of business line capabilities, ambitions, and ability to map these to important opportunities in the Americas region
  • Effectively report and track progress of all new opportunities and propose business plan and actions to close to key stake holders within the business line and sales team
  • Identify key decision makers within customer engineering, executive teams, and purchasing to establish relationships in favor of NXP expansion
  • Coordinate globally and facilitate joint business meetings across regional geographies that have similar robotics customers and applications

Qualifications:

  • Bachelor or Master degree in Electrical or Computer Engineering
  • 10\+ years additional experience in Business Development, Marketing, Product Line Management, Key Account Management/Program Management or Application Engineering
  • Self\-Starter with very strong leadership, entrepreneurship, results oriented drive to win
  • Proven track record of business development, applications engineer, or sales in a fast growth, high tech company
  • Demonstrate a high learning agility and strong analytical skills, both technical\-literate and business\-savvy
  • Excellent communication skills, both written and spoken (experience of dealing with diverse customers, cultures and functions)
  • Strong sales, negotiating, and influencing skills
  • Regular exposure and presence to Senior Executives
  • Tenacity \- Not willing to lose any opportunity or explore new and unknown business cases
  • Ability to travel \> 30% of the time
  • K nowledge and experience in key robotics customers

The base salary range for this position is as mentioned below per year. We also provide competitive benefits, incentive compensation, and/or equity for certain roles.

Company benefits include health. dental, and vision insurance. 401(k), and paid leave. Please note that the base salary range (OR hourly rate) is a guideline, and individual total compensation may vary based on a number of factors such as qualifications, skill level, work location, and other business and organizational needs. This base pay range is specific to California and is not applicable to other locations. A reasonable estimate of the base salary range as of the date of this posting is:

$186,200 to $256,100 annually

More information about NXP in the United States...

NXP is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer regardless of age, color, national origin, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital status, status as a disabled veteran and/or veteran of the Vietnam Era or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. In addition, NXP will provide reasonable accommodations for otherwise qualified disabled individuals.

\#LI\-6692

Salary Context

This $186K-$256K range is above the 75th percentile for AI Product Manager roles in our dataset (median: $185K across 167 roles with salary data).

View full AI Product Manager salary data →

Role Details

Title Business Development Manager - Robotics and Edge AI
Location San Jose, CA, US
Experience Mid Level
Salary $186K - $256K
Remote No

About This Role

AI Product Managers define what AI features get built and why. They translate business problems into ML-solvable tasks, work with engineering to scope model requirements, and own the metrics that determine if an AI feature is working. The role requires a rare combination of technical fluency and product instinct.

Unlike traditional product management, AI PM work involves managing uncertainty at a fundamental level. Your model might work 90% of the time. What happens the other 10%? What's the user experience when the AI is wrong? How do you measure 'good enough' for a probabilistic system? These questions don't have easy answers, and the AI PM is the person responsible for finding them.

Across the 4,317 AI roles we're tracking, AI Product Manager positions make up 4% of the market. At NXP Semiconductors, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.

AI Product Manager roles are growing as companies realize that shipping AI features requires different product thinking than traditional software. The best candidates combine product management experience with enough technical depth to have productive conversations with ML engineers about model capabilities and limitations.

What the Work Looks Like

A typical week includes: reviewing model evaluation results with the ML team, defining success metrics for a new AI feature, conducting user research on how customers respond to AI-generated outputs, writing product requirements that include accuracy thresholds and fallback behaviors, and presenting the AI roadmap to leadership. You're the translator between technical capability and business value.

AI Product Manager roles are growing as companies realize that shipping AI features requires different product thinking than traditional software. The best candidates combine product management experience with enough technical depth to have productive conversations with ML engineers about model capabilities and limitations.

Skills in Demand for This Role

Python (52% of roles) Aws (28% of roles) Azure (22% of roles) Rag (21% of roles) Gcp (15% of roles) Pytorch (15% of roles) Prompt Engineering (14% of roles) Kubernetes (13% of roles)

Technical fluency with ML concepts is essential, though you won't be writing models. Expect to understand training data, evaluation metrics, model limitations, and responsible AI practices. SQL and basic Python are increasingly expected. Experience with A/B testing, data analysis, and product analytics is baseline. Understanding LLM capabilities and limitations is now a core requirement.

The differentiator is AI-specific product thinking: knowing when to use ML vs. heuristics, understanding the cost of training data collection, designing graceful degradation for model failures, and building products that improve with usage data. Experience with AI safety, bias mitigation, and responsible AI deployment is increasingly important.

Strong postings describe specific AI products the PM will own, mention the ML team structure, and talk about measurement methodology. Look for companies that have already shipped AI features. Roles at companies that are 'exploring AI' often mean you'll spend a year defining the strategy before any building happens.

Compensation Benchmarks

AI Product Manager roles pay a median of $217,100 based on 471 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $194,400. Disclosed range: $186K to $256K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($287,500) and Research Engineer ($272,100). By seniority level: Entry: $110,000; Mid: $194,400; Senior: $227,400; Director: $274,554; VP: $241,000.

NXP Semiconductors AI Hiring

NXP Semiconductors has 2 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, AI Product Manager. Positions span San Diego, CA, US, San Jose, CA, US. Compensation range: $162K - $256K.

Location Context

Across all AI roles, 15% (635 positions) offer remote work, while 3,657 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,650 roles, $220,000 median); San Francisco (1,335 roles, $265,000 median); Los Angeles (708 roles, $214,112 median).

Career Path

Common paths into AI Product Manager roles include Product Manager, Data Analyst, Technical Program Manager.

From here, career progression typically leads toward Director of AI Product, VP Product, Head of AI.

The most effective path is PM experience plus self-directed AI education. Take Andrew Ng's courses, build a small ML project, and learn enough Python to read model evaluation code. The goal isn't to become an ML engineer. It's to have credibility in technical conversations and to understand what's possible, what's hard, and what's a bad idea.

What to Expect in Interviews

AI interviews typically combine coding challenges (Python-focused), system design questions tailored to the role, and discussions about your experience with relevant tools and frameworks. Strong candidates demonstrate both technical depth and the ability to make pragmatic engineering tradeoffs. Prepare portfolio projects that demonstrate end-to-end capability rather than isolated skills.

When evaluating opportunities: Strong postings describe specific AI products the PM will own, mention the ML team structure, and talk about measurement methodology. Look for companies that have already shipped AI features. Roles at companies that are 'exploring AI' often mean you'll spend a year defining the strategy before any building happens.

AI Hiring Overview

The AI job market has 4,317 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 138 entry-level, 2,071 mid-level, 1,655 senior, and 453 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 15% of the market (635 positions). The remaining 3,657 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($287,500 median, 34 roles); Research Engineer ($272,100 median, 227 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($244,000 median, 23 roles).

AI Product Manager roles are growing as companies realize that shipping AI features requires different product thinking than traditional software. The best candidates combine product management experience with enough technical depth to have productive conversations with ML engineers about model capabilities and limitations.

The AI Job Market Today

The AI job market spans 4,317 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (3,004), Data Scientist (345), AI Software Engineer (309). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.

The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (138) are outnumbered by mid-level (2,071) and senior (1,655) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 453 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 15% of all AI roles (635 positions), with 3,657 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.

AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $215,000. Top-quartile roles start at $266,300, and the 90th percentile reaches $320,790. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.

Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $287,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $145,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.

The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (2,249 postings), Aws (1,224 postings), Azure (938 postings), Rag (915 postings), Gcp (660 postings), Pytorch (640 postings), Prompt Engineering (624 postings), Kubernetes (559 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.

Frequently Asked Questions

Based on 471 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI Product Manager positions is $217,100. Actual compensation varies by seniority, location, and company stage.
Technical fluency with ML concepts is essential, though you won't be writing models. Expect to understand training data, evaluation metrics, model limitations, and responsible AI practices. SQL and basic Python are increasingly expected. Experience with A/B testing, data analysis, and product analytics is baseline. Understanding LLM capabilities and limitations is now a core requirement.
About 15% of the 4,317 AI roles we track offer remote work. Remote availability varies by company and seniority level, with senior and leadership roles more likely to offer location flexibility.
NXP Semiconductors is among the companies actively hiring for AI and ML talent. Check our company profiles for detailed breakdowns of open roles, salary ranges, and hiring trends.
Common next steps from AI Product Manager positions include Director of AI Product, VP Product, Head of AI. Progression depends on whether you lean toward technical depth, people management, or product strategy.

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