Hardware Systems Lead, Drone

Applied Intuition•Sunnyvale, CA

11d•Onsite

About The Position

As Hardware Systems Lead for the drone program, you will serve as the hands-on chief engineer for the hardware that carries Applied Intuition’s autonomy into the air. You will understand and own the complete mechanical and electrical system, ensuring it survives and remains operational during flight. You will architect, build, test, and evaluate hardware, using test results to improve its weight, durability, and reliability. Your decisions will shape hardware performance under wind, vibration, shock, temperature extremes, and moisture, while you collaborate with autonomy, software, and flight test teams to get aircraft flying. The role owns end-to-end hardware architecture for drone platforms, including integration of sensors, compute, power systems, communications, and flight controllers. You will define and drive survivability, manage size, weight, and power tradeoffs, establish requirements and reusable reference architectures, and plan and conduct environmental, durability, and flight testing. You will analyze failures and crashes, determine root causes, and implement design improvements. As the technical authority for hardware tradeoffs, you will lead design reviews, establish engineering standards, mentor engineers, and support flight test campaigns, demonstrations, and field operations. Applied Intuition is an in-office company. Full-time employees are expected to work primarily from an Applied Intuition office five days a week, with flexibility for occasional remote work and schedule adjustments. This in-office expectation does not apply to contractor positions.

Requirements

BS or MS in Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical, Mechatronics, or a related field.
10+ years of hands-on hardware engineering experience on drones, UAS, or other aircraft.
Strong command of the complete hardware system, including airframe and structures, electrical architecture, power distribution, harness design, avionics, and how these components interact.
Track record of designing hardware for demanding environments, with practical experience in vibration, shock, ingress protection, thermal management, and EMI/EMC.
Hands-on lab and field experience building prototypes, wiring and debugging systems, running flight tests, and diagnosing failures and crashes.
Experience integrating sensors such as cameras, lidar, radar, and GNSS/IMU, along with compute and flight-control hardware, onto airborne platforms.
Experience with SWaP optimization and lightweight design, including composites and carbon fiber.
Experience with reliability and qualification testing, including environmental testing, HALT, and flight-hour tracking.
Systems-level thinking and ability to make and defend architecture decisions.
Experience designing for manufacturability and field serviceability.

Nice To Haves

Experience with fixed-wing, multirotor, or VTOL platforms.
Familiarity with aerospace standards such as DO-160, MIL-STD-810, and MIL-STD-461.
Experience with propulsion, battery, or power system integration.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end mechanical and electrical hardware architecture for drone platforms.
Prototype, build, integrate, debug, and test hardware on real aircraft.
Define how sensors, compute, avionics, harnesses, connectors, and enclosures withstand vibration, shock, hard landings, thermal extremes, dust, water ingress, and EMI.
Lead integration of cameras, lidar, radar, GNSS/IMU, compute, power systems, communications, and flight controllers onto airframes.
Own size, weight, and power tradeoffs, balancing performance, flight time, payload capacity, and cost.
Define hardware requirements and reference architectures that scale across aircraft configurations.
Plan and conduct environmental, durability, and flight testing; analyze failures and crashes; drive root-cause analysis and design fixes.
Serve as the technical authority and escalation point for hardware tradeoffs across mechanical, electrical, avionics, software, autonomy, and flight test teams.
Lead hardware design reviews, set engineering standards, and mentor other engineers.
Support flight test campaigns, demonstrations, and field operations.