Product Manager Gas Sensor

Anna Schulenberg studied chemistry at the University of Oxford and completed a doctorate in spectroscopy at ETH Zurich. She spent a year teaching English in China before her doctorate and later, she moved back to England for three years. Anna's job at Sensirion also allows her to travel the world.

Anna came on board as a Key Account Manager at Sensirion in 2012 and looked after important key customers in the medical technology sector. For the past six months or so, she has been Product Manager for the new gas sensor and is essentially responsible for the product definition, handling the product from inception through to market implementation. She is responsible for evaluating customer needs and what is possible from a technical perspective - and then reconciling these two aspects. This means she has to weigh up a variety of factors such as functionality, manufacturability and cost. And it's precisely this balancing act between technical viability and customer requirements that Anna relishes in her work. This two-pronged approach involves her in both the sales and technology side of the business, making her role particularly diverse. Thanks to her teaching experience, Anna is well-equipped when it comes to communicating and clarifying ideas and presenting arguments, thoughts and technical limitations on both sides.

As a Product Manager, Anna travels frequently. This appeals to her, particularly as she only travels part of the time: there are periods when she travels all over the world and is constantly meeting with customers, while at other times she is back home and working closely with the R&D department.

Anna also values the freedom she has to make decisions and the responsibility the job affords her. This has been especially evident in her current work on the SGP multi-pixel gas sensor. This was the first sensor of its kind and Anna was able to make decisions independently - she happily refers to the project as a "start-up in a large company". Since then, Anna has been handling the product's industrialization, a new experience for her and something she has found particularly interesting. She is pleased to be surrounded by an expert and highly skilled Sensirion team who are always on hand to answer her questions.

The atmosphere at Sensirion is marked by helpfulness and freedom.

And it's precisely these qualities that make Sensirion a special company for Anna: people are always approachable, willing to help one another and there is no sense of a hierarchy. She is happy with the friendly atmosphere at Sensirion in general, where mistakes are dealt with openly and learned from. She also enjoys the personal freedom the company offers: as long as you are performing well, you can structure your own work and as well as the free time during the work day; for example, employees can relax in the Creativity Zone or take time out with colleagues to enjoy a coffee or an ice-cream.

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