Operations Manager

Background on Pike Robotics

Pike Robotics is a Houston-based, post-revenue startup building Wall-Eye, the first wall-crawling robot engineered to inspect fixed equipment in hazardous, flammable, and confined spaces. Our first use case is above-ground storage tank inspection—work that today requires costly shutdowns, is dangerous to perform, and often produces inaccurate results. Wall-Eye enables zero-incident, in-service inspection, reducing cost to asset owners by up to 80%.

Founded in 2022 from a collaborative research project between Phillips 66 and Texas Robotics Labs, Pike completed its MVP in 2023. The company has completed over 35 tank inspections for major energy and chemical companies with many more scheduled for this year. Pike has also won awards including 1st place Chevron Facilities of the Future, Top 4 Rose Rock Bridge showcase, 5th place Texas A&M New Ventures, and 8th place Rice Business Plan Competition. Pike is supported by the National Science Foundation, Deepstar Technology Consortium, University of Texas at Austin, Rose Rock Bridge, Venture Capitalists, and others, working with 15+ customers and partners in the Oil & Gas and Chemical industries.

Why this Work Matters

Our robots keep technicians out of explosive environments and give operators continuous, high-quality data to make better maintenance decisions. Your work will directly improve safety and emissions outcomes for the process industries, while reducing costs.

Type of Role

Commitment: Full-time (40–50 hours/week depending on deadlines)

Location: In-person at the Gradient in Tulsa, OK with intermittent travel to customer sites;

1 to 2 days of remote work allowed per week. Location is different from main Company HQ in order to start building out presence in Oklahoma to serve our customers in the region.

Start Date: Summer 2026

Work Environment & Physical Requirements:

• Comfortable working in industrial environments while wearing PPE (safety glasses, hard hat, gloves, FR clothing when required)
• Able to lift/carry robot components, tools, and equipment up to 50 lbs
• Able to climb stairs at customer sites
• Willing to complete required site safety training and drug/alcohol testing; follow all customer and Pike safety procedures

Description of Role

As an Operations & Commercial Project Manager at Pike Robotics, you will help plan, coordinate, and scale robotic inspection deployments for industrial asset owners in the midstream, downstream, chemical, and broader process industries. This role sits at the intersection of customer operations, project planning, field execution, commercial analysis, and go-to-market strategy. Your work will help turn robotic inspection from a promising technical capability into a repeatable, profitable, and trusted service model for customers.

You will translate customer asset needs, site constraints, safety requirements, inspection goals, and robot capabilities into clear execution plans. You will support projects from early customer scoping through site readiness, mobilization, field execution, data/report delivery, customer acceptance, closeout, and post-job lessons learned. Because Pike is a startup, you will also help build the operating system around this work: pricing models, proposal processes, project trackers, customer communication routines, job-level economics, and repeatable playbooks for future deployments.

This role is ideal for someone who understands industrial maintenance, inspection, integrity, or field-service work, but is excited to help customers adopt a safer and more modern inspection approach. You do not need to be a roboticist, but you must be technically curious, operationally disciplined, commercially thoughtful, and comfortable working closely with engineers, customers, and field teams in ambiguous situations.

Responsibilities:

• Plan and coordinate robotic inspection deployments from initial customer scoping through job closeout, including schedule, resources, site readiness, customer communication, and internal handoffs.
• Translate customer asset information, inspection objectives, access constraints, safety requirements, and deliverable expectations into practical execution plans for Pike and the customer.
• Build and maintain project schedules, work plans, lookaheads, execution trackers, action-item lists, and customer-facing project updates to keep deployments moving.
• Coordinate cross-functional work across customers, engineering, field operations, vendors, subcontractors, and leadership to resolve blockers and maintain project momentum.
• Prepare and refine customer-facing proposals, scopes of work, bid packages, project summaries, commercial documents, and post-job reports in collaboration with technical and commercial teammates.
• Track job-level economics including mobilization cost, labor hours, travel, equipment utilization, pricing, gross margin, and project profitability; use this data to improve pricing and service delivery decisions.
• Conduct market, customer, competitor, and industry research to identify trends, untapped opportunities, customer pain points, and attractive segments for robotic inspection services.
• Support business development and go-to-market strategy by helping identify, qualify, and pursue new opportunities with industrial customers, while maintaining strong relationships with existing clients.
• Create repeatable processes, templates, checklists, dashboards, and playbooks that make customer deployments safer, smoother, easier to quote, and easier to scale.
• Capture lessons from each field deployment and translate customer, site, and operational feedback into clearer requirements for engineering, product, sales, and future job planning.

Company Culture

We’re driven by a shared mission—to make industrial inspection safer, smarter, and more sustainable through advanced robotics. Every team member can grow into a well-rounded engineer with real autonomy earned through impact. We value initiative, adaptability, and open discussion. Pike is a place for builders who enjoy solving hard problems. As we are not a large company, we only accept tough and resilient people, who take intense pride in the quality of their work. If you are not a team player and unwilling to make sacrifices, work long hours, or take on tasks that are sometimes outside your job description, you will not last in this role.

Experience & Qualification Questionnaire (Yes/No)

Please answer the questions from the categories below in the LinkedIn application form.

A) General Experience and Qualifications

B) Industrial Inspection and Customer Environment

C) Project Planning and Field Execution

D) Commercial Operations and Go-To-Market

E) Technology Adoption

F) Communication, Systems, and Collaboration

Compensation

Salary: $75k–$105k (dependent on % of Yes answers in questionnaire and equity requested)

Equity: Stock options targeting 0.2%–0.5% fully diluted ownership at grant, 4-year vesting with 1-year cliff. Unlike most startups, your equity will have a real payout event in the next 4 to 5 years.

Benefits: 2 weeks PTO; healthcare; relocation travel expense reimbursement

Application

Complete LinkedIn application process and wait to be contacted by hiring manager. Ensure resume clearly highlights relevant industrial operations, project planning, customer-facing, commercial, and technical-service experience. DO NOT email company or send connection request to Founders.

Pike Robotics is an equal opportunity employer.