The Best Product Job Isn't In Engineering
9 July 2026
How working closest to the product gives you the most leverage over it
It was 7:00 AM. Cold and wet. A Dutch winter with rain all around.
It was just the four of us on site. Three other operators and me. I had barely had any training, but the day before I had told Stijn I was ready to go solo.
I was not ready.
The wall I was given was on the the north side of the house, the side that the sun doesn’t touch. It took me more than a week to build, brick after brick.
But standing there in the rain, I could see a dozen things that needed improvement. And that’s when it clicked: none of those improvements would ever happen unless someone was out there, cold hands and all, close enough to the machine to notice the issues.
This is the job where the actual product gets built.
The job I'm talking about? Robot Operator. Which actually was not the job I applied for. Let me back up.
Why you should work for a startup
When I came out of school I did not really know what to do. You could say I was a bit lost. The one thing I knew, though: wherever I ended up, it had to be a startup.
Startups are special. A handful of people, no permission from anyone, starting with almost nothing but building something that might actually change the world one day.
You get to work with very smart people and everyone is aligned on the same goal: to succeed. It is the fastest way to grow that I know of. There is nowhere to hide, and you have an absurd amount of agency to actually change things.
So I went hunting and found Monumental. A hard tech startup. The physical world is still full of unsolved problems and cracking those might actually change what the world looks like.
Prototyping Technician felt like the perfect role for someone with a background in industrial design. So I messaged Salar, one of the founders, sent over my CV, and waited. I did not get the response I was hoping for.
“We are not looking for Technicians right now.”
Becoming a robot operator
The email didn’t end there. Dom, who handles our hiring, reached out. “You should interview for our Robot Operator role.” A role they had been initially struggling to fill. “It’s a hard job, but you can make a real impact.” When the Prototyping Technicians role would open up again, I would get my chance to move.
I had no idea what to expect but I took the offer anyway.
I was so nervous during the on-site interview that I actually nearly blew it. I had to give Dom a call back later that evening to correct for all the mistakes I had made. That call ended with me getting the offer - and I am so glad it did, because I fell completely in love with the work.
Being a Robot Operator
So what is the work?
As a Robot Operator you are out on site, closest to the actual product. That puts you in a special position.
You are the one who sees it when the robot does something it isn’t supposed to. You are the one who notices that a step takes ten times longer than it should.
Every friction log, every “this is broken,” every “why does it do that,” goes straight back to the engineers, and the next version of the product is shaped by what you notice being out there on-site.
But it is more than working on the product. You are actually changing the physical world. You are building things. Hotels, houses, canal walls in the centre of Amsterdam. Walls that will be there for generations to come.
Nothing you do here is theoretical. You are out there, getting your hands dirty, building something real.
Yes, sometimes it will be cold, and yes, sometimes it will be raining, but being so close to the product actually allows you to have so much leverage over it.
So after six months on deployment, when I was asked if I still wanted to work as a prototyping technician, the job I had actually applied for, I said no.
If you want to improve the product. Get closer to it than anyone else is willing to.
Where it goes from there
A year later I moved into Product Engineering. Same sites, same conditions but instead of running one robot, I walked the entire site. Talking to every operator, catching problems across the whole deployment.
Last month I became Deployment Manager. Now I set up the deployments themselves, the places we still learn the most from.
None of this was handed to me, but what I am trying to tell you is: the room to grow is everywhere. There is a title that doesn’t exist yet with your name on it.
Conclusion
That north wall, the one that took me a week; It’s still standing. People live behind it now. They cook dinner and go to sleep there. The north wall that was built with a robot that has been improved a hundred times since.
Improved by operators who are out there with the product, noticing what I noticed. And we don't just ship features, we actually build houses. Houses real people live in. Meaningful work.
Someone is going to be out there next winter. Cold hands, first wall, not ready. Maybe it’s you.
→ We’re hiring robot operators in The Netherlands, and Founding Robot Operators in the UK