Commercial Launch & Deployment Manager

Mill is a waste prevention technology company reimagining what it means to eliminate waste, starting with food. We build smart systems and infrastructure for homes, businesses, and municipalities that transform food scraps from landfill-bound waste into valuable resources, including chicken feed. Tens of thousands of Mill’s residential food recyclers are already helping households divert millions of pounds of food scraps every year, paving the way for our upcoming launch of Mill Commercial—the industry’s first end-to-end solution for managing, understanding, and preventing food waste in commercial environments (e.g. grocery, restaurants, food services). At Mill, we are passionate about building easy-to-use, beautifully designed technologies that keep food in the food system and out of landfills. The Role Are you a veteran of hardware program management who thrives where physical hardware meets high-stakes operational environments? Have you managed complex new product introductions (NPI) or scaled infrastructure solutions across commercial business footprints? As the Commercial Launch & Deployment Manager, you will serve as the strategic architect and tactical execution lead for Mill’s commercial launch and expansion. You will own the hardware launch sequence end-to-end, transitioning our business from initial commercial pilots to full-scale enterprise operations. This is not a traditional product marketing GTM role; it is an operational orchestration role designed for an exceptional leader. Key Responsibilities 1. Site Readiness & Launch Program Management • Develop, iterate, and enforce the "Mill Commercial Site Readiness Checklist" and launch playbooks across heterogeneous commercial kitchen configurations. • Build and maintain the integrated master launch schedule for all customers bridging Hardware Engineering, Supply Chain, Logistics, Field Operations, and Partner Success teams. • Design and govern the hardware phase-gate approval process for launching into commercial environments, navigating rigorous compliance protocols, standard operating procedures, and partner requirements. • Lead daily/weekly cross-functional syncs to mitigate risks and work through bottlenecks, tracking critical paths to ensure hitting committed deployment schedules. 2. Vendor Management & Third-Party Orchestration • As required, source, vet, negotiate contracts with, and manage third-party vendors needed for successful deployments. • Act as the escalation lead for field issues during active deployments, ensuring service level agreements (SLAs) are rigorously maintained through installation phases. • Audit vendor performance, ensuring work conforms to Mill's standards, technical specs, and partner-specific security or access requirements. 3. Partner Success & Sustaining Operations Hand-off • Partner deeply with the commercial account team to translate complex technical workflows into simplified, high-adoption standard operating procedures (SOPs) for grocery kitchen staff. • Co-develop and deploy training curricula, localized quick-reference documentation, and train-the-trainer frameworks optimized for high-turnover service environments. • Design the formal operational hand-off architecture transferring sites from the active "Launch" state into "Sustaining Field Operations." Who You Are • A Hardware Deployment Veteran: You have a proven track record of shipping or deploying physical hardware products. Backgrounds in enterprise IoT, commercial charging/energy infrastructure, commercial appliances, or industrial supply chain hardware deployments are highly valued. • An Operations Mindset: You possess a tactical, "measure twice, cut once" philosophy. You are comfortable interfacing with a lot of people daily and dealing with logistics, general contractors, loading docks, and facilities managers. • Cross-Functional Liaison: You know how to translate technical constraints to corporate leaders and floor managers alike with clarity, empathy, and absolute professionalism. • Thriver in Ambiguity: You love taking an unmapped operational process, creating order from chaos, and writing the playbook that the rest of the company will follow. • AI-enabled Approach: You err on the side of diving into optimizing workflows through applying AI to help scale at increasing speed and efficiency. Qualifications & Requirements • 6+ years of program management, field operations, or hardware launch experience, with at least 3 years specifically dedicated to B2B, commercial infrastructure, or enterprise hardware environments. • Demonstrated experience building scale playbooks, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and site deployment tracking architectures. • Technical literacy; comfortable diving into hardware specifications, electrical/space constraints, facility architectural diagrams, and network connectivity profiles. • Willingness to travel regionally up to 20-30% during peak site-deployment and validation cycles. • Experience operating within health, safety, food-handling, or building compliance frameworks (OSHA, NSF, UL, etc.) is a distinct advantage. • MBA preferred The estimated base salary range for this position is $160k to $200k, which does not include the value of benefits or a potential equity grant. A wide range of factors are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to skill sets, market conditions, experience and training, licensure and certifications, and business and organizational needs. At Mill, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role.