Location: Cochin, Kerala (Primarily in-office, with occasional travel)

Role Type: Full-time

About SGBI Inc (Sastra Robotics)

SGBI Inc is a Silicon Valley-based robotics and AI company operating across the USA, UK and India. We are building next-generation Physical AI systems that combine AI, robotics, computer vision and intelligent software to automate quality assurance of both software and hardware in smart devices.

Our flagship platform, QUACO (Quality Assurance Companion), enables AI-driven, robot-aided testing of Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs), bridging the gap between digital intelligence and real-world systems.

We work with global enterprise customers across industries such as retail, banking, automotive, consumer electronics, avionics and medical, helping them accelerate product validation for complex, hardware-dependent software and physical products.

Role Overview

We are looking for a high-ownership Project Manager to run delivery across our full project portfolio: new product development, software releases, customer deployments and hardware production.

You will be the single point of truth on what is being delivered, by whom and by when. You will plan the work, run the review rhythm, keep our project tools accurate, track and report delivery KPIs, and hold teams and vendors to their commitments, flagging risks to leadership before they become problems.

You will work closely with the founders, engineering leads and our customers and integration partners in the UK, US and Middle East.

Key Responsibilities

1. Project Portfolio Management

- Own the portfolio of active projects across R&D;, software, customer engineering and production.
- Maintain accurate phase, status, priority, milestones, ETAs, dependencies and next actions for every project.
- Publish a clear weekly portfolio view to leadership, with RAG status and the decisions needed.

2. KPI Tracking & Reporting

- Define and maintain delivery KPIs such as on-time milestone delivery, schedule variance, overdue task ageing, change request volume, customer issue resolution time, production cycle time and FQC first-pass yield.
- Build and maintain live KPI dashboards in ClickUp and Excel / Google Sheets, with data that is accurate and up to date.
- Produce weekly and monthly reports for leadership, concise summaries suitable for board and investor updates, and status reports for customers.
- Analyse trends, identify root causes of delays or recurring issues, and recommend corrective actions.
- Provide objective delivery data to support team performance reviews, working with HR.
- Use AI tools such as Claude, Google Gemini or ChatGPT to research, analyse data and prepare clear, well-structured reports and presentations for stakeholders.

3. Planning & Execution





- Plan projects from requirement to release using a phase-gated lifecycle, with defined owners, milestones and deliverables at each stage.
- Maintain the project document checklist for each phase and ensure documents are produced and approved on time.
- Manage scope and change requests, assessing impact on timelines, cost and resources before they are accepted.

4. Resource & Capacity Management

- Know who is working on what, their next assignment and their expected availability.
- Plan capacity across concurrent projects that share people, test units and equipment, and resolve conflicts early.
- Raise resourcing gaps to leadership with clear options and trade-offs.

5. Review & Governance Rhythm

- Run the daily, weekly and monthly review cadence across teams.
- Follow up on overdue tasks and blockers persistently until they are closed.
- Record decisions, actions and owners, and make sure they are carried through.

6. ClickUp Governance

- Own ClickUp as the single source of truth for project work: spaces and lists, task structure, custom fields, status flows, bugs, due dates, dashboards and access.
- Set and enforce usage standards so that status in the tool always reflects reality, including handling of overdue items.
- Build dashboards that give leadership an at-a-glance view of delivery health.

7. Customer Governance

- Manage delivery commitments to enterprise customers and integration partners: contacts, milestones, pending actions, change requests and issues.
- Maintain the evidence and communication trail and document trackers for each customer engagement.
- Prepare customer status updates and coordinate deployments, installations and site visits, including international logistics.

8. Production Coordination

- Track the production plan for robot units end to end: materials, procurement, stock, assembly, final quality check (FQC) and shipment.
- Work with Procurement, Stores, QA and Assembly to keep builds on schedule, and manage vendor and lead-time risks.
- Maintain a production dependency checklist and flag shortages or delays early.

What Success Looks Like in the First 6 Months

- Every active project is visible in ClickUp with accurate status, owners and dates.
- A KPI dashboard is live and reported monthly, and leadership uses it to make decisions.
- The daily, weekly and monthly review rhythm runs consistently,



with overdue items actively followed up.
- Every customer commitment is tracked with an owner and a date, and customers receive regular, reliable updates.
- Production builds are tracked from materials to shipment, with risks raised before they cause delays.
- Leadership has fewer surprises: delays and conflicts are flagged early, with options.

What We Are Looking For

- 6+ years of project management experience, including delivery of technology products that combine hardware and software.
- Proven experience running multiple concurrent projects with shared resources.
- Experience managing delivery for enterprise customers, including change requests and escalations.
- Robust working knowledge of project tools such as ClickUp, Jira or Asana (ClickUp preferred), and of Excel or Google Sheets.
- Hands-on experience defining KPIs and building dashboards and reports: advanced Excel / Google Sheets (pivot tables, lookups, charts) and project tool dashboards.
- Able to turn data into clear, concise insight for senior leadership, not just raw numbers.
- Proficiency in AI tools (essential): confident, day-to-day use of tools such as Claude, Google Gemini or ChatGPT for research, analysis, drafting and building stakeholder presentations. This will be assessed during the interview.
- Understanding of hardware production: procurement, lead times, stock, assembly and quality checks.
- Excellent written and verbal English; able to write clear status reports for leadership and customers.
- Firm, persistent follow-up; comfortable holding senior engineers and vendors to commitments.
- Willingness to take occasional calls outside Indian working hours with UK and US teams, and a valid passport for occasional travel.
- Engineering degree (BE / B.Tech) preferred.

What Will Make You Stand Out

- Experience in robotics, automation, embedded or electromechanical product companies.
- Experience with phase-gated (stage-gate) new product development.
- Having set up project governance or tooling from scratch in a startup.
- Experience working with system integrators or channel partners.
- Exposure to ERP systems such as Odoo for stock and procurement.
- Experience with BI tools such as Looker Studio or Power BI.
- PMP, PRINCE2 or Agile / Scrum certification.

Important Note

This role is suited for someone who drives delivery, not someone who only tracks it. You will be expected to chase, challenge and escalate, and to own outcomes across teams. If you are looking for a purely coordination or administrative role, this may not be the right fit.

Practical proficiency with AI tools is a core requirement for every role at SGBI. Candidates without it will not be considered.

📌 Project Manager (Kochi)
🏢 SGBI INC - Sastra Global Business Innovations
📍 Kochi