---
title: 'Director Supply Chain & Hardware Operations at Sereact'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-supply-chain-hardware-operations-sereact-stuttgart-54cb5rwvzvpj'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-02'
---

# Director Supply Chain & Hardware Operations at Sereact

- **Company:** Sereact
- **Location:** Stuttgart, Germany
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-20
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-02
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sereact/27ae9382-f320-4742-878f-66ef1e63b4f8

## Job description

Who We Are: We build the intelligence that lets robots sense, reason, and act in the real world, moving beyond the lab and into everyday industrial settings like warehouses and factories. Our technology closes the automation gaps that traditional systems can't solve. We are on a mission to redefine how physical work gets done, and we're looking for curious, bold thinkers to help shape the future of robotics with us. Overview: Our AI-driven pick-and-place and returns-handling cells combine robot arms, adaptive force-controlled grippers, AI vision and a safety cabinet, all driven by Cortex, our vision-language-action model. They already run in live customer operations across the EU and US. We are scaling from around 50 units a year to several hundred, and getting there means moving production to external contract manufacturers with full quality control at the supplier. We're looking for a Director of Supply Chain & Hardware Operations to own the path from a release-ready design to a QA'd unit shipped to the customer. You will report to the CEO and receive frozen designs from our Director of Hardware Product Engineering & Industrialization through a shared Design-Transfer Gate. Your Responsibilities: Contract Manufacturing & Industrialization

- Move gripper, cell, cabinet and final assembly to external contract manufacturers and EMS partners, with suppliers building to spec and shipping direct to customers where possible
- Take frozen designs from Product Engineering into repeatable volume production, including ramp plans, build and work instructions and jigs
- Run a first pilot build of grippers outside our own facility within your first 90 days

Supplier Management & Quality

- Select, negotiate with and manage suppliers, including commercial terms and capacity planning
- Build redundancy for critical single points of failure such as the robot arm and long-lead or sole-source parts
- Own incoming inspection, supplier quality, first article inspection, PPM targets and the manufacturing side of the RMA process

Planning, Inventory & Logistics

- Build S&OP, forecasting and buffer stock so parts are staged weeks ahead of each deployment
- Reduce supplier lead times and keep demo and fleet hardware available
- Own shipping and import and export across the EU and US

Cost & Operating Model

- Own hardware unit cost and bring COGS down over time
- Implement the split between bespoke builds and a standardized product line on the operations side
- Set up the supply chain operating model, KPIs and review cadence for your function

Qualifications: Education and Experience

- 10+ years in supply chain, manufacturing or hardware operations, including several years in a leadership role
- A track record of taking a complex electromechanical product from prototype to hundreds of units per year, with production that kept running after the ramp
- Experience standing up outsourced contract manufacturing, supplier quality, logistics and inventory from scratch in a scaleup or growth-stage company
- Degree in engineering, supply chain, operations or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

## Skills

- Hands-on supplier management, including selection, negotiation and supplier quality
- Manufacturing quality, NPI and industrialization experience
- Supply and demand planning and inventory management
- Comfortable installing operating discipline, accountability and KPIs in a fast-moving, resource-constrained environment
- Fluent English and willingness to travel to suppliers and customer sites

Additional Skills / Nice to Have

- Experience in robotics, warehouse automation, AMRs or autonomous vehicles
- Experience turning demos and pilots into repeatable production deployments
- Experience working with product engineering on design-to-cost and DfM
- German fluency

What We Offer:

- Competitive salary and equity in a fast-growing Series B robotics company
- Flexible PTO and a collaborative, high-ownership culture
- Ownership of our supply chain and manufacturing setup as we scale to hundreds of units a year

## About Sereact

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Sereact provides an embodied AI software layer that enables autonomous robotic picking, sorting, and inspection in industrial warehousing and logistics.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B – $110M raised in May 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Stuttgart, Germany (with additional offices in Mason, Ohio, USA and Boston, Massachusetts, USA)
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Not publicly listed (the company was founded by a team of engineers from the University of Stuttgart / ARENA2036 ecosystem)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Industrial robotics / AI software for logistics and supply chain
- **Target customers**: B2B – 3PLs, e‑commerce fulfillment centers, manufacturing, and retail enterprises
- **Mission**: “Bridging the gap between artificial intelligence and physical execution” – building the foundational software layer for the next era of industrial robotics.

## Products & Services
- **Cortex (VLAM – Vision Language Action Model)**: The core AI brain that enables zero-shot adaptation across standard 6‑axis and humanoid robot arms. Handles picking, placing, sorting, and inspection without retraining or tuning.
- **Robotic Picking**: Autonomous pick‑and‑place with 98% first‑attempt success and peak speeds >650 UPH.
- **Putwall Automation**: Batch picking and sortation for high‑throughput fulfillment.
- **Return Handling**: Automated inspection, sorting, and routing of returned items.
- **Embodied AI for Humanoids**: Dexterity module for changing tasks and mixed‑SKU environments.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric – Total Funding**: $140.78M (including $110M Series B led by Headline, closed ~May 2026)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Headline (lead Series B); customers include Daimler Truck, Material Bank, Ludwig Meister
- **Growth Signals**:
  - 50+ deployments across five continents
  - 500M+ real production picks processed
  - 99.9% uptime in live environments
  - 1 robot replaces 3–4.5 FTE, saving customers up to €111,000/month
  - Expansion into US market (offices in Ohio and Boston)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Zero‑shot adaptability**: No retraining or retooling required when SKU mix changes – works out of the box on new items.
- **Production‑proven VLAM**: Trained on millions of real‑world picks; works in brownfield sites, not just lab conditions.
- **High reliability**: 98% first‑attempt pick success, >99% uptime, minimal human intervention (1 intervention per ~53,000 picks).
- **Platform agnostic**: Supports standard 6‑axis and humanoid robot architectures.

## Strategic Focus
- Scale deployments globally, especially in the US and Europe.
- Continue advancing the Vision Language Action Model to handle increasingly complex manipulation tasks (e.g., humanoid dexterity).
- Deepen partnerships with major logistics and manufacturing players.
- Grow engineering and research teams to accelerate product development.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Fast‑paced, collaborative, with a strong emphasis on ownership and end‑to‑end project responsibility. Described as “uncharted territories” – ideal for engineers who want to push boundaries.
- **Flexibility**: Flexible working hours and remote/hybrid options (specific policy not detailed, but “flexible working” is listed as a standard benefit).
- **Perks**: Wellpass (wellness/fitness membership), regular team events, and a modern office in Stuttgart’s ARENA2036 innovation hub.
- **Engineering focus**: Work on cutting‑edge embodied AI, computer vision, and robotics – from research to deployment. Steep learning curve and visible impact.
- **Global exposure**: Opportunities to work across European and US teams.

## Sources
1. [sereact.ai – Homepage](https://sereact.ai/)
2. [sereact.ai – About](https://sereact.ai/about)
3. [sereact.ai – Careers](https://sereact.ai/careers)
4. [jobs.ashbyhq.com – Sereact Job Board](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sereact)
5. [cbinsights.com – Sereact Company Profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/sereact)

## Other roles at Sereact

- [Field Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/field-marketing-manager-sereact-stuttgart-vs2b6gxy3dhq) — Stuttgart, Germany
- [Chief Science Officer](https://feeny.ai/job/chief-science-officer-sereact-stuttgart-jcxrqsj7pzcy) — Stuttgart, Germany
- [Partner Manager (m/f/d)](https://feeny.ai/job/partner-manager-m-f-d-sereact-germany-3vcxd9mgdp4t) — Germany
- [Director Technical Support & Field Service](https://feeny.ai/job/director-technical-support-field-service-sereact-stuttgart-6rgvn8b0khc8) — Stuttgart, Germany
- [Director NPI & Industrialization](https://feeny.ai/job/director-npi-industrialization-sereact-stuttgart-2n9b5qsy59rw) — Stuttgart, Germany
- [Internship G2M (m/f/d)](https://feeny.ai/job/internship-g2m-m-f-d-sereact-stuttgart-szp64ba16kq1) — Stuttgart, Germany
- [Senior Support Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-support-engineer-sereact-boston-87rvr3pe58y4) — Boston, MA
- [Member of Technical Staff (m/f/d)](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-m-f-d-sereact-zurich-kdcnsnp7bq1j) — Zurich, Switzerland
- [Mechanical Design Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-design-engineer-sereact-boston-hafyy6q4wytn) — Boston, MA
- [Electrical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/electrical-engineer-sereact-boston-mffg80t4dgqt) — Boston, MA