Product Development Project Manager

Nex is on a mission to help families rediscover the joy of movement. Created by parents for parents, Nex combines technology and play to deliver fun, social, and interactive experiences powered by natural body motion, encouraging kids and adults to move more, play more, and have fun together. Nex Playground, the company’s award-winning active play system, is purpose-built to get families moving year-round, with safety and privacy as core considerations in its intentional design. It is certified kidSAFE+ COPPA compliant and built to support healthy, active play for all ages and abilities.

Nex Playground features a growing library of 50+ experiences, including motion and dance games, fitness and educational experiences, and Nex Originals. Content includes collaborations with partners like Hasbro, Sesame Workshop, and NBCUniversal. Nex has been recognized by Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, TIME’s Best Inventions, and Parents’ Best Entertainment System for Families, and has earned Red Dot, IDEA, and Core77 international design awards. We encourage you to explore Have Fun and Is Motion Gaming Back?, as they offer a deeper look into our culture, values, and explain how our approach to motion gaming differs from previous generations.

Important Notice: ⚠️ To protect yourself from recruitment scams, please note that Nex communicates through official company emails ending in @nex.inc. If you receive a suspicious email or message, please do not respond and report it immediately to us.

Location: Hong Kong
Type: Full Time
Reports to: Head of Product Management, New Products

The Role

As the Senior Product Development Manager for New Products, you will lead end‑to‑end development of soft and hard goods from concept through mass production and post‑launch refinement. You will translate business objectives and customer insights into clear requirements, align teams on scope, schedule, quality, and cost, and drive execution across industrial design, materials, packaging, testing, compliance, and supply chain. You will be the primary interface to external partners and factories, protecting design intent and manufacturability, ensuring regulatory readiness, and proactively managing risks, budgets, and change control. Success is measured by on‑time delivery to quality and cost targets, smooth scale‑up, and crisp communication of status, trade‑offs, and decisions.

What You'll Do

• Own multiple soft and hard goods programs end‑to‑end, delivering to scope, schedule, quality, and cost.
• Translate product requirements into clear specs with design and engineering; protect design intent while ensuring manufacturability.
• Drive with cross functional team for DFx across plastics, textiles, and mixed‑material assemblies, including part design, tolerances, surface finishes, seams, trims, and assembly.
• Lead prototyping through production readiness: lab dips/strike‑offs, T0/T1, golden samples, tooling, sampling, and approvals.
• Source, evaluate, and onboard vendors and manufacturing partners; manage performance on cosmetic quality, yield, throughput, and cost.
• Work with packaging team to coordinate packaging from dielines and artwork to structural validation, transit tests, and retail compliance.
• Plan and execute validation and reliability: fit/function, abuse and sharp‑edge, seam and pull tests, colorfastness, and process capability.
• Work with compliance team to manage safety and regulatory approvals for toys and consumer goods and define pre‑compliance strategies.
• Establish QA/QC with AQL sampling, in‑process controls, and final inspections; drive CAPA with vendors.
• Maintain program dashboards and cadences with clear updates, dependencies, risks, and trade‑offs for stakeholders.

Must Have

• 10+ years in program or product development delivering soft and hard goods at scale.
• Strong grasp of ME, CMF, and DFx with manufacturing processes such as injection/blow molding, extrusion, die‑cutting, sewing, heat sealing, printing, and assembly.
• Background spanning textiles and plastics, color management, printing methods, packaging materials, and surface treatments.
• Demonstrated experience with packaging engineering and transit testing, and with QA/QC in factory environments.
• Fluency with project tools and artifacts, including schedules, timeline views, risk registers, dashboards, BOMs, and change orders.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management; able to drive alignment across design, operations, sourcing, and vendors.
• Fluency in English and Mandarin.

Nice to Have

• PMP or comparable program management certification.
• Hands‑on experience with toy and consumer‑goods safety and regulatory labs.
• Rapid prototyping fluency across soft and hard goods, with tight iteration cycles.
• Strong supplier development chops: vendor scorecards, QBRs, corrective action leadership, and dual‑sourcing strategy
• Contract and commercial negotiation experience with suppliers on cost, MOQs, tooling amortization, and SLAs
• Experience with sustainability initiatives such as recycled content, packaging minimization, and eco‑labeling claims.

Travel, and Time zones

• Travel: International travel to factories and labs as needed
• Timezone: Will collaborate across timezones with our global teams

We Offer

• Competitive compensation package.
• Flexible working hours and vacation policy.
• Product-driven culture that treasures talents and individual growth.
• Front-row seat and hands-on experience with cutting edge technologies in the evolving gaming field

Nex is located in San Jose, California, USA and Hong Kong. Learn more about us at https://www.nexplayground.com/about. 

We encourage applications even if you don’t meet more than 50% of the requirements — we believe that experience comes in many forms!

Nex is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. This policy applies to all individuals at every stage of the employment relationship, including all current and prospective employees, and covers all employment decisions including recruitment, hiring, job assignment, promotion, compensation, benefits, training, discipline and termination.

We are committed to providing a workplace free from discrimination and harassment and to fostering an inclusive environment for all employees.