Working Student / Thesis - Strategy Operations & Business Development

About TACTILIA At TACTILIA, we are building the industry-ready robotic hand that closes one of the biggest gaps in Physical AI. Spun out of SCHUNK the global market leader in gripping technology, we combine a decade of robotic-hand expertise and real industrial access with the speed and ambition of a deep-tech startup.

This isn't a research project waiting for its first customer. We already have a product, customers are ready to use it, and we are launching now. Your work will directly shape the team, culture and processes that make that possible.

You will join at the moment when a strong product turns into a real business: how do we build the strategy, the partner and customer pipeline, and the operating rhythm that let us scale as fast as the technology allows?

The Role As a Working Student or thesis student in Strategy Operations & Business Development, you will work directly with our Business Development lead and on the questions that decide how TACTILIA grows: which markets we go after, how we price and cost what we build, who our first partners and customers are, and how we prove our progress to the board.

Some days you're sizing a market or building a competitor teardown. Other days you're pulling together the numbers for a board update or helping shape a pricing model.

Both matter equally here. What You Will Do – Support business strategy and market sizing. Help translate our target markets and product priorities into clear numbers – market size, growth, and where the real opportunity sits.

– Track the competitive landscape. Keep tabs on competitors, adjacent players, and relevant funding and product news, and turn it into insights the leadership team can actually use.

– Help build our partner and customer pipeline. Research and qualify potential integrators, partners, and anchor customers, and prepare the materials that support outreach and first conversations.

– Get our office and internal structures off the ground. Help plan and implement our office set-up and the practical structures a growing team needs on the ground – this is a hands-on part of the role, not just an analytical one.

– Help build our internal reporting and steering tools. Contribute to the dashboards and processes that give the leadership team a real-time view of the business.

What You Bring – Currently studying business administration, industrial engineering, economics, or a related field (Bachelor's or Master's) – A structured, analytical way of working and genuine comfort with numbers and data – Real interest in robotics, deep tech, or Physical AI – Confident with Excel and PowerPoint, and quick to pick up new tools – Fluent English; German is a plus – Available for at least four to six months, whether as a working student or for a thesis project The next chapter of robotics won't be built in a lab.

It will be built by people who care about what happens when technology meets the real world. At TACTILIA, you'll work on one of the hardest open problems in robotics: giving machines the dexterity, reliability, and robustness they need to interact with the physical world at industrial scale.

The technology is taking shape. The team is being built. And the standards for robotic hands and their skills are still wide open. That means your decisions will have a lasting impact – not just on a product, but on what comes next for Physical AI.

Build the hand. Define the standard. Shape what comes next. If you're excited by the challenge of building robotic hands that work reliably in the real world, we'd love to hear from you.