Head of Engineering, Hardware

AI Foundry•Seattle, WA

6d•$275,000 - $425,000

About The Position

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.

Requirements

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.

Responsibilities

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.