Head of Engineering, Hardware

About this role

<p><strong>Compensation:</strong> $275K - $425K+</p> <p><strong>Travel Requirement:</strong> International travel required to India 8+ times per year</p> <p> </p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p><em>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.</em></p> <h3>What You'll Do</h3> <ul> <li>Set engineering direction across mechanical, electrical, systems, prototyping, validation, and product development work.</li> <li>Build and lead a hardware engineering team with a high bar for technical quality and speed.</li> <li>Translate product and business goals into engineering roadmaps, technical requirements, and execution plans.</li> <li>Own the path from prototype through design validation, reliability, manufacturability, and launch readiness.</li> <li>Work closely with industrial design, manufacturing, supply chain, vendors, and leadership to align product intent with engineering reality.</li> <li>Review architecture, designs, test plans, tradeoffs, and risks with enough depth to guide strong decisions.</li> <li>Establish engineering operating rhythms, documentation standards, design reviews, and quality gates.</li> <li>Identify technical risks early and create practical plans to resolve them.</li> <li>Represent engineering in leadership conversations and communicate tradeoffs clearly.</li> </ul> <h3>Who You Are</h3> <ul> <li>You have led hardware engineering teams through real product development cycles.</li> <li>You have depth in mechanical, electrical, systems, or product engineering and enough breadth to lead across disciplines.</li> <li>You understand prototyping, validation, reliability, certification, manufacturability, and production handoff.</li> <li>You can build teams, set standards, and develop strong engineering talent.</li> <li>You make decisions with incomplete information and can defend technical tradeoffs clearly.</li> <li>You communicate well with design, manufacturing, vendors, executives, and technical teams.</li> <li>You are practical: you care about elegant engineering, but you also know products have to ship.</li> <li>You are comfortable building processes from scratch without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.</li> <li>You can hold a high bar without becoming rigid or hard to work with.</li> <li>You are energized by building a hardware organization from the ground up.</li> </ul> <h3>How We Work</h3> <p>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.</p> <ul> <li>We are hands-on with AI and technical tools, and we make ideas tangible through prototypes, clear artifacts, and working systems.</li> <li>We move quickly, share work early, and keep refining until the product experience feels useful, polished, and memorable.</li> <li>We focus on the hardest problems and the outcomes that matter, with the judgment to change course when the evidence points somewhere better.</li> <li>We communicate clearly enough that teammates, leaders, and AI-assisted workflows can act on our thinking across time zones.</li> <li>We collaborate with openness and respect, build on other people's ideas, and treat shared ownership as part of doing excellent work.</li> <li>We speak up directly and constructively when something looks wrong, then commit fully once a decision is made.</li> </ul> <h3>Benefits & More</h3> <ul> <li>Medical and Dental benefits</li> <li>401K</li> <li>Opportunity to shape AI strategy for 500M+ users</li> </ul>