Regional Business Development & Operations Lead - Lombardia, Italy

About Complete Robot

We are an early-stage, venture-backed company currently operating out of San Francisco, building AI-enabled systems for automated physical environments. The company works at the intersection of AI agents, connected devices, user experience, machine data, and real-world commercial operations. Complete Robot Inc. was founded by Tomasz Stańczak, founder of Nethermind. To learn more about the company, vision, and the technology we’re building, visit the Complete Robot website.

About the role

We are looking for a senior business development and operations lead in Italy, ideally based in Lombardia, with direct experience in vending, payments, coffee vending, convenience retail, retail automation, or adjacent industrial technology.

You will help develop the company's Italian commercial presence by building relationships, identifying pilot opportunities, supporting partner conversations, and helping turn early interest into structured commercial progress.

This role requires someone who is commercial, operational, and technical enough to have credible conversations with traditional retail, industrial, and machine-based businesses.

For candidates who can start immediately, there may be an opportunity to join the founding team in San Francisco for an intensive onboarding and company-building period at a prestigious accelerator. This may include staying with the team in the accelerator environment while working closely on early customer, product, and market-development work, subject to timing, availability, travel, immigration, and company approval.

This is an early role with significant growth potential for the right candidate.

Responsibilities

• Own early business development for Italy, starting in Lombardia and nearby commercial regions.
• Build relationships with operators, commercial partners, distributors, payment companies, retail automation businesses, and strategic location owners.
• Identify pilot opportunities in vending, coffee vending, unattended retail, and related self-service environments.
• Support commercial conversations, meetings, demos, and structured follow-up.
• Work directly with the founder on Italian market development, customer feedback, and partner strategy.
• Help position the company credibly with industrial and retail stakeholders.
• Translate local market feedback into product, integration, and deployment requirements.
• Support pilot planning, field coordination, demo logistics, and early customer success.
• Help develop the first version of the Italian sales and operations playbook.
• Build the foundation for a future local team across business development, operations, field deployment, and customer success.

Requirements

• Direct experience in at least one of the following is required: vending machines, coffee vending or office coffee service, unattended retail, payments, POS, or merchant services, convenience retail, retail automation, self-service kiosks, automated food, beverage, or snack retail, industrial electronics or machine distribution related to retail automation.
• Strong network in Italy, ideally Lombardia, across relevant operators, payment providers, retailers, distributors, or technology partners.
• Italian fluency required.
• Professional English required.
• Ability to sell a new technology product to traditional industrial and retail stakeholders.
• Ability to understand conversations around hardware, software, payments, service, inventory, and operator economics.
• Willingness to travel across Lombardia, Northern Italy, and other relevant Italian markets.
• Comfortable working in an early-stage startup with high autonomy and limited structure.
• Strong follow-through and ability to turn relationships into concrete next steps.

Preferred experience

• Experience working with Italian vending companies, coffee-machine companies, payment providers, or automated retail businesses.
• Experience selling or deploying payment systems, telemetry systems, POS, retail automation, IoT hardware, or related technology.
• Experience launching new products or partnerships with industrial, retail, or operator partners.
• Experience with channel sales, distributors, operators, or franchise-style networks.
• Experience building a country or regional sales function from scratch.

Success outcomes

• You build a practical understanding of the Italian market and priority commercial opportunities.
• You identify and qualify strong target partners, customers, and pilot locations.
• You secure high-quality meetings with relevant decision-makers.
• You help move at least one serious opportunity toward a pilot, collaboration, or commercial next step.
• You provide clear local feedback that improves product positioning and deployment planning.
• Over time, you help establish Italy as an important market for the company.

Why Join

This is a chance to help build the Italian business for a new technology company operating in automated retail and machine-based commerce.

The ideal candidate will not only sell, but help create the local foundation for long-term growth.

Immediate starters may also have the opportunity to join the team in San Francisco during an early accelerator period, staying and building together with the founding team while helping shape the company's first commercial foundation.