Company
Hive Autonomy
Annual salary
$150k – $180k/yr
Location
Austin, TX
Listed
5d ago
- Experience:
- 5 to 10 years
- Workplace:
- 2 - 3 days in-office in Austin, TX (office + warehouse facility). Approximately 40% travel to customer sites across the US, up to 3 weeks at a time.
- Equity:
- Competitive equity
Hybrid in Austin, TX.
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About this Role
We are looking for an Operations Manager with 5-10 years of experience to build and lead Hive Autonomy's first US operational team from the ground up. You'll be joining a Physical AI company that makes industrial machines like forklifts and heavy equipment autonomous, and you'll own everything post-deployment, from hiring and training operators to hitting customer KPIs and scaling across sites. This is a true 0-to-1 opportunity: no existing playbooks, no inherited team, just you building the operational foundation for Hive's US expansion. You should be comfortable working on-site at customer locations (including up to 3 weeks of travel at a time), thrive in ambiguity, and bring deep experience from robotics, autonomous vehicles, heavy equipment, or industrial automation environments.
What will you be doing?
Own day-to-day operational performance across live customer sites post-deployment, including monitoring KPIs, SLAs, uptime, safety, and service quality
Recruit, onboard, train, and manage Hive's US operator team, building shift structures, workforce plans, and coaching operators on autonomous industrial machines
Scale Hive's technology within customer accounts, taking them from 1-2 machines to 30-40+ while ensuring consistent operational standards
Travel to customer sites (approximately 40% of the time, up to 3 weeks at a stretch) to ensure smooth operations and build strong client relationships
Help establish Hive's US operating base in Austin, including local infrastructure, suppliers, equipment, and operational routines as one of the first hires on the ground
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I apply for the Operations Manager (US) role at Hive Autonomy? +
Use the Apply for a referral button on this page to send us your LinkedIn and CV. If your experience fits, we'll introduce you to the recruiter filling this role. They'll email you to check you're interested, then put you forward for this job or others that suit you better. It's free.
What does this Hive Autonomy role pay? +
The listing gives $150k – $180k/yr.
Is this role remote? +
The listing gives the location as Austin, TX. 2 - 3 days in-office in Austin, TX (office + warehouse facility). Approximately 40% travel to customer sites across the US, up to 3 weeks at a time.
Interview Prep
Sample questions for a Operations Manager role, written in-house to help you prepare.
How do you prioritize competing operational tasks when everything seems urgent?
I evaluate each task by actual business impact and how time-sensitive it genuinely is, rather than by who's asking loudest, since urgency is often inflated by whoever raised the request. I communicate the prioritization clearly so stakeholders understand where their task actually sits, rather than leaving them to assume it's been forgotten.
What's your approach to identifying operational risks before they become actual problems?
I look at processes with single points of failure, like a critical task that only one person knows how to do, since those tend to be where risk concentrates even if day-to-day operations look smooth. I build in redundancy for the highest-impact risks rather than trying to address every possible risk equally.
How do you communicate an operational change to a team in a way that gets genuine buy-in rather than just compliance?
I explain the reasoning behind the change and how it affects their day-to-day work specifically, rather than just announcing what's changing, since people are more likely to actually adopt a change they understand the purpose of. I also build in a channel for feedback rather than treating the announcement as final and closed.
What's your process for deciding whether an operational inefficiency is worth the cost of fixing versus living with?
I weigh the cumulative cost of the inefficiency over time against the cost and disruption of fixing it, rather than fixing everything that's technically suboptimal. A minor inefficiency in a low-volume process might not be worth the disruption of changing it, while the same inefficiency in a high-volume process usually is.
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