Human Robot Interaction Agent at Sunday

At Sunday Robotics, we are developing personal robots designed to give people back the valuable time they lose to repetitive everyday tasks.

Our mission is to make general-purpose robots accessible to households, helping people spend less time on routine responsibilities and more time doing what matters.

Over the past 18 months, we have assembled a talented team, secured funding, and made significant progress in validating our technology.

As we enter our next phase of growth, we are looking for passionate and innovative individuals to help bring our vision to life.

If you are excited about working at the cutting edge of robotics and shaping the future of human-robot interaction, we would love to hear from you.

About the Role

Memo will be the first home robot many of our customers ever experience living alongside. Every aspect of his behavior — from how he moves and communicates to his voice, lighting, animations, and app interactions — plays an important role in shaping users’ impressions and building lasting trust.

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is the discipline behind designing these experiences intentionally.

As our first dedicated Human-Robot Interaction Product Manager, you will take ownership of Memo’s personality and overall user experience.

This includes defining his character, voice, movement patterns, animations, lighting, sound effects, and communication across both the physical robot and its companion app.

You will collaborate closely with animators, voice and sound designers, app designers, behavior-system engineers, and the consumer product team to ensure Memo feels recognizable, approachable, intuitive, and engaging.

This is a product leadership role where you will determine what Memo should do, how he should communicate, and why each interaction matters, while working with cross-functional teams to bring those experiences to life.

What You’ll Do

Develop and manage Memo’s character: Transform his existing biography into a comprehensive character guide covering his personality, perspective, communication style, preferences, and reactions to different situations. Ensure every team uses it as a consistent reference when designing his behavior.

Lead the HRI product roadmap: Oversee the human-robot interaction experience across movement, gestures, audio, voice, lighting, app notifications, and interface states. Determine what Memo communicates, when he communicates, and which channel is most appropriate.

Establish interaction standards: Create and maintain a detailed set of interaction triggers that define how Memo and the companion app should respond to different robot states and events. Make these specifications clear enough for engineering implementation and quality assurance testing.

Direct animation development: Establish creative briefs, guide animation reviews, and ensure animations achieve three core objectives: clear communication of Memo’s intentions, memorable and shareable moments, and delightful user experiences.

Shape Memo’s voice and sound identity: Define his voice, conversational personality, tone, and delivery. Ensure his speech works naturally with his movements and that voice interactions feel comfortable in a real home environment.

Design everyday human interactions: Develop how Memo responds to adults, children, and pets in situations such as greetings, waiting, requesting assistance, completing tasks, and handling interruptions. Work with the Trust & Safety Product Manager to establish appropriate safety responses and recovery behaviors.

Gather insights from real households: Observe beta families interacting with Memo, collect feedback from internal testing and real-world deployments, and translate those findings into actionable product requirements.

Collaborate with engineering teams: Work with behavior-system and animation-pipeline engineers to understand the robot’s capabilities and limitations while advocating for the tools needed to review, evaluate, and test animations effectively.

Measure HRI performance: Establish and monitor key indicators, including how easily users understand Memo’s intentions, positive unsolicited feedback from beta households, satisfaction with voice and animation, and the completeness of responses to defined interaction triggers.

What You’ll Bring

• At least 4 years of experience in product management, interaction design, or character and experience design for products that people interact with regularly, such as consumer robots, voice assistants, video games, animated characters, toys, smart-home devices, or wearables.
• A design background and portfolio are desirable. You should have experience shaping how a product looks, moves, sounds, or communicates and be able to demonstrate your creative direction. You do not need to be an animator or sound designer, but you should be capable of guiding specialists effectively.
• Strong understanding of character development and personality design, including how personality, movement, and voice combine to create a recognizable and engaging identity.
• Experience coordinating animation, sound, and user interface design to deliver a consistent experience across multiple product touchpoints.
• Sufficient technical knowledge to collaborate with engineers, understand a robot’s physical and computational capabilities, and make practical decisions when balancing creative ambitions with technical limitations.
• Strong user research and observation skills, with the ability to identify where users become confused or misunderstand a product’s behavior and translate those insights into improvements.
• Ability to work effectively in an early-stage, fast-moving environment where processes and product foundations may still need to be established.
• Additional advantages: Experience in robotics or physical-product HRI, character animation direction for games or film, voice and conversational design, text-to-speech technologies, or synchronizing audio with movement.

What Success Looks Like in Your First 6 Months

• A comprehensive character guide for Memo is completed and actively adopted by the animation, voice, app design, and engineering teams.
• The core HRI interaction framework is fully defined across the robot and companion app, with clear ownership and regression-testing procedures.
• Memo’s voice, animations, and lighting work together to communicate a consistent and recognizable personality, with beta families naturally recognizing and appreciating the experience.
• First-time users can easily understand what Memo intends to do, what he is currently doing, and whether he has successfully completed a task.
• Animation and voice development have clearly defined creative briefs, an established review process, and a roadmap supporting the R1 product release.