Hardware Engineer (Electrical)

Navi AI • San Francisco, CA

6h

About The Position

Navi captures everything a pilot sees and hears. The Wave is how we do it — the hardware that lives in the cockpit, captures flight data, and streams it to the cloud in real time. This role is building the next generation of that device. This is a founding hardware role where the engineer will own the entire physical product — from bare-metal architecture through PCB design, ruggedized enclosure, embedded firmware, environmental certification, fleet deployment, and cloud integration. This is Version 2 of the Wave, and the engineer will be the definitive technical voice for every decision that shapes it. The device must survive cockpit environments — heat, vibration, RF noise — while continuously streaming high-bandwidth audio and telemetry over wireless networks without dropping a frame. It must be deployable across hundreds of aircraft and manageable as a fleet. It must meet certification standards for operating in aircraft. And it must be built fast, because Navi is already live at flight schools and the U.S. Air Force and demand is accelerating. This role is for individuals who thrive in high-autonomy environments and love building mission-critical edge devices that work in the real world.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in systems engineering, embedded edge compute, or connected hardware development — with a track record of bringing a complex device to market, not just prototyping one
• Deep understanding of electronics design — PCB schematics, microcontrollers, wireless communication modules (cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth)
• Experience collaborating with industrial or mechanical designers to build ruggedized enclosures that survive challenging thermal, vibrational, and environmental conditions
• Strong proficiency in embedded C/C++ or Python for edge applications, with experience running RTOS or embedded Linux
• Familiarity with edge-to-cloud architecture, device fleet management, and building scalable live data infrastructure
• Hands-on experience navigating rigorous hardware certification processes and environmental testing standards
• Ability to own projects end to end in ambiguous, fast-moving environments — and ship product

Nice To Haves

• Experience with edge processing and lossless streaming of high-bandwidth data — real-time audio, complex signal processing, or continuous telemetry
• Background building hardware for aviation, defense, or other safety-critical regulated industries
• Familiarity with avionics data formats, cockpit audio systems, or aircraft electrical environments

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end technical design of Navi's next-generation edge compute node — architecture, component selection, PCB layout, and mechanical enclosure
• Build hardware that is ruggedized for cockpit environments — thermal, vibrational, and environmental stress — and optimized for continuous wireless data transmission
• Architect real-time data pipelines for processing and streaming high-fidelity audio and complex telemetry from the edge to the cloud with minimal latency
• Own the hardware validation lifecycle — environmental testing, quality assurance, and securing regulatory and industry-specific certifications for hardware operating in aircraft
• Develop and oversee embedded firmware and edge processing logic — real-time operating systems, on-device compute, and fleet-wide OTA update infrastructure
• Guide the architecture of live cloud-based telemetry dashboards to ensure seamless data ingestion and real-time visibility from deployed devices
• Collaborate with software and ML engineers to ensure the hardware captures exactly what the intelligence layer needs to generate automated debriefs

Benefits

• Flight training — earn your pilot's license and build with true domain expertise
• Impact you can see — the device you build will be in cockpits at flight schools, airlines, and the U.S. Air Force
• A role that scales into hardware leadership as we grow

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed