Back to jobs

Head of Engineering, Hardware

Seattle, WA

Compensation: $275K - $425K+

Travel Requirement: International travel required to India 8+ times per year

 

AI Foundry is an AI building and consulting business working with some of the largest companies in the world. AI Foundry is partnered with a major global company operating across finance, consumer, and retail verticals, leading their AI efforts from the ground up.

The team is seeking builders who want to be part of something massive: designing and building multi-agent AI systems that will reshape how hundreds of millions of people interact with financial services, retail, insurance, and consumer products.

AI Foundry is looking for a Head of Engineering to lead mechanical and electrical engineering work for a hardware business being built from the ground up. This role requires someone who can set engineering direction, build a team, make strong technical decisions, and move from prototype to manufacturable product.

If you have led hardware engineering through real product development and want to build a high-caliber team from scratch, we want to hear from you.

What You'll Do

  • Set engineering direction across mechanical, electrical, systems, prototyping, validation, and product development work.
  • Build and lead a hardware engineering team with a high bar for technical quality and speed.
  • Translate product and business goals into engineering roadmaps, technical requirements, and execution plans.
  • Own the path from prototype through design validation, reliability, manufacturability, and launch readiness.
  • Work closely with industrial design, manufacturing, supply chain, vendors, and leadership to align product intent with engineering reality.
  • Review architecture, designs, test plans, tradeoffs, and risks with enough depth to guide strong decisions.
  • Establish engineering operating rhythms, documentation standards, design reviews, and quality gates.
  • Identify technical risks early and create practical plans to resolve them.
  • Represent engineering in leadership conversations and communicate tradeoffs clearly.

Who You Are

  • You have led hardware engineering teams through real product development cycles.
  • You have depth in mechanical, electrical, systems, or product engineering and enough breadth to lead across disciplines.
  • You understand prototyping, validation, reliability, certification, manufacturability, and production handoff.
  • You can build teams, set standards, and develop strong engineering talent.
  • You make decisions with incomplete information and can defend technical tradeoffs clearly.
  • You communicate well with design, manufacturing, vendors, executives, and technical teams.
  • You are practical: you care about elegant engineering, but you also know products have to ship.
  • You are comfortable building processes from scratch without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
  • You can hold a high bar without becoming rigid or hard to work with.
  • You are energized by building a hardware organization from the ground up.

How We Work

We are looking for people who use AI to raise the speed, quality, and ambition of the work while staying grounded in customers, teammates, and measurable outcomes.

  • We are hands-on with AI and technical tools, and we make ideas tangible through prototypes, clear artifacts, and working systems.
  • We move quickly, share work early, and keep refining until the product experience feels useful, polished, and memorable.
  • We focus on the hardest problems and the outcomes that matter, with the judgment to change course when the evidence points somewhere better.
  • We communicate clearly enough that teammates, leaders, and AI-assisted workflows can act on our thinking across time zones.
  • We collaborate with openness and respect, build on other people's ideas, and treat shared ownership as part of doing excellent work.
  • We speak up directly and constructively when something looks wrong, then commit fully once a decision is made.

Benefits & More

  • Medical and Dental benefits
  • 401K
  • Opportunity to shape AI strategy for 500M+ users

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Resume/CV*

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Education

Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in AI Foundry’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...