About Alchemy
Alchemy is a nanotechnology company building solutions for the automotive and defence industries. We are transforming legacy industries by vertically integrating our coatings innovations into category leading ready-to-use solutions. Our two main solutions are:
- ExoShield windshield protection films for the automotive industry
- Crypsis infrared camouflage coatings for the defence industry
We are at the growth-stage of our journey and are focused on sustainable top-line growth across both our automotive and defence business units. Alchemy is backed by leading investors and incubators in Canada, USA, and France such as Y-Combinator, Stanford-StartX, Pathfinder, Pembroke, NameSilo, and more.
Our team is a diverse, tight knit group of engineers, scientists, and business professionals that likes to spend time together in and out of the office, whether that is weekly badminton nights or team lunches. We are a team passionate about cars, cool technology, and working together to dominate the market segments we operate in.
You can learn more about Alchemy at: www.alchemynano.com
Role Summary
Alchemy is looking for a Senior Product Manager, Defence to bring clarity, structure, and prioritization to our Crypsis development roadmap and, where relevant, defence-related applications of ExoShield. This role involves managing physical products with long, complex development cycles, and sits at the intersection of market opportunities, commercial partnerships, and technical execution. You will be helping leadership decide where to focus, helping partners bring Crypsis-enabled solutions to market, and helping the technical team execute efficiently within real-world constraints. In doing so, you will be expected to be the primary owner of the product roadmap and primary driver of execution priorities.
Crypsis is a capability platform that integrates into other physical products and systems. This role is not about managing a conventional standalone product; it is about understanding customer needs, partner capabilities, procurement pathways, technical potential and constraints, validation requirements, and commercial priorities, and then translating those inputs into clear priorities, requirements, milestones, and execution focus for the team.
This is a hands-on product role focused on bringing structure to a fast-moving defence business. The role owns the product roadmap and prioritization process for defence applications across multiple markets to create clarity, reduce whiplash, and help the technical team execute on the highest-value opportunities in the most impactful and efficient way.
Key Responsibilities
- Roadmap Ownership
- Own and maintain the defence product roadmap across key application areas, partner integrations, customer programs, and validation milestones.
- Prioritize active, exploratory, and parked application lanes based on customer pull, strategic value, technical feasibility, revenue/funding potential, and execution risk.
- Create clear visibility into what the team is working on, why it matters, what success looks like, and what comes next.
- Requirements & Success Criteria
- Translate customer, partner, and market inputs into clear technical questions, validation plans, product requirements, and success criteria.
- Define the use case, operating environment, user/customer, partner/product format, technical requirements, risks, and next milestone for each active application lane.
- Ensure requirements are specific enough to guide R&D without becoming disconnected from market or customer priorities.
- Input Synthesis
- Collect and synthesize structured inputs from market leads, customers, partners, leadership, and technical teams.
- Identify which requests represent recurring market needs, strategic opportunities, revenue/funding opportunities, or one-off distractions.
- Help prevent unstructured customer feedback from creating unnecessary R&D whiplash.
- Trials, Demos, and Validation Milestones
- Maintain visibility into key field trials, operational exercises, demonstrations, evaluations, and validation milestones.
- Work with internal teams to ensure demos and trials are connected to clear learning objectives or strategic opportunities, with defined success criteria and follow-up actions.
- Capture learnings from trials and demonstrations and translate them into roadmap updates, product requirements, or priority decisions.
- Internal Coordination
- Work closely with R&D, leadership, operations, and market-facing teams to align priorities, communicate tradeoffs, and keep execution focused.
- Coordinate product inputs for RFIs, RFPs, proposals, customer follow-up, and partner discussions where roadmap, requirements, or validation status matter.
- Help create the systems and cadence needed for product intake, prioritization, roadmap review, and decision-making.
- Industry & Partner Relationships
- Work closely with Program Directors in each market to engage key end users and stakeholders to provide capability briefs, collect feedback and requirements, gain market insight, and develop strong relationships.
- Work closely with R&D to engage key partners to develop product roadmaps and create alignment on deliverables, action items, and milestones.
- Attend conferences, trade shows, and industry events to build connections with end users, stakeholders, and partners.
- Other
- Filling in capability or capacity gaps in the team as required to ensure key projects keep moving forward and key events, milestones, demos, or initiatives do not miss the mark.
Our Ideal Candidate
We are looking for a structured, commercially minded product leader who can synthesize inputs from customers, market leads, partners, and technical teams into a clear roadmap, priorities, and execution plan. The ideal candidate likely has 5 to 10 years of relevant experience in product management, technical program management, or a related role. This role is best suited for someone who is comfortable with technical products, ambiguity, and a commercialization model where our technology reaches the market through integration with partners’ products and systems.
- Structured thinker who can turn inputs from customers, partners, market leads, and technical teams into clear requirements, milestones, and roadmap decisions.
- Strong product and commercial judgement, with the ability to balance customer needs, market opportunity, revenue/funding potential, technical feasibility, and execution risk.
- Able to learn technical details quickly, understand constraints, ask good questions, and build credibility with technical and customer-facing teams.
- Hands-on and execution-oriented, with the ability to create documents, trackers, briefs, decision memos, and roadmap materials when needed.
- Comfortable working with enabling technologies or capability platforms that integrate into other products and systems.
Security Requirements
You must meet CISD and DDTC requirements for secret level personal security clearances to be eligible for this role. You are not required to have a security clearance already, although having one is a bonus.
If you do not already have CISD and DDTC security clearances, Alchemy will request information during the final steps of the interview process to perform a preliminary assessment for eligibility and likelihood of success in gaining a security clearance. If successful, we will assist you through the administrative process of gaining any required security clearances following your start date.
Other Requirements
In addition, to be considered for this position you must:
- Legally be able to work in Canada
- Pass federal and local criminal background checks
- Able to commute to our headquarters in Kitchener (4 days/week)
- Able to travel internationally for customer meetings, demos, conferences, etc. on an as-needed basis
