Founding Hardware Engineer

Confidential client — a Seed-stage startup (1-10 employees) whose platform captures everything a pilot sees and hears during a flight and turns it into automated debrief intelligence for flight instructors and squadron commanders. The platform is already live at multiple flight academies and with a U.S. military customer. The company's in-cockpit hardware device streams audio and telemetry data to the cloud in real time, where AI analytics generate the debrief. Full-Time, In-person, San Francisco, CA. Experience: 5+ years. Salary: $150,000-$200,000/yr. Visa sponsorship: None available.

About the Role: This is a founding hardware role, and the person who fills it owns the physical product end to end: PCB architecture and layout, component sourcing and procurement, environmental testing, embedded firmware, and the build-vs-buy decisions that determine how the in-cockpit device scales from its current 3D-printed prototype to a fleet-deployed cockpit device. The team is five people today, and this hire joins the technical side alongside the CTO and lead software engineer as one of the first ten employees. The role requires someone who is deeply hands-on, capable of reasoning through a six-month hardware roadmap with full architectural clarity, and comfortable making consequential decisions with limited precedent.

What You'll Own:

- Own the full PCB design lifecycle: architecture, component selection, layout, and iterative builds from the current prototype toward a fleet-ready cockpit device

- Make build-vs-outsource decisions on hardware manufacturing, balancing cost, compute requirements, and thermal constraints for an in-cockpit environment

- Lead component sourcing and procurement, identifying which parts to use and where to get them across the supply chain

- Plan and execute environmental testing to validate the device against heat, vibration, and RF noise conditions in live aircraft

- Develop and own embedded firmware and edge processing logic as the hardware matures

- Report directly to the CTO and collaborate with the software engineering team to ensure hardware captures the data the AI analytics layer requires

Must-Have: 5+ years of hands-on hardware engineering experience, with a demonstrated track record of building and shipping physical devices.

Company stage: Seed. Work type: In-person (San Francisco, CA). No visa sponsorship available.