Product Engineer, Hardware

SageOx•Seattle, WA

7d•Onsite

About The Position

SageOx is an early-stage startup focused on the intersection of AI and the future of work, believing that AI agents will handle routine tasks, freeing humans for creativity, judgment, and collaboration. The company is seeking strategic, independent thinkers to shape its future. This role is for one of the first ten employees, pioneering new approaches in a less-defined environment. The company is developing hardware, starting with the "Ox Dot," a physical device that acts as a presence for AI agents in a room. This role is the first dedicated hardware engineer, with a significant focus on the Ox Dot's stability, speed, and safety, as well as building the infrastructure for hardware development. The engineer will also work on the full stack, including cloud services, app and web experiences, and firmware. The role requires adaptability to potentially shift focus to new hardware or different parts of the stack as the company evolves. A key challenge is the difficulty and time consumption of hardware development and debugging, which slows down innovation. The engineer's primary responsibility will be to establish a hardware test lab with automated, 24/7 QA to quickly identify regressions. This will enable faster innovation and build confidence for scaling to millions of devices in the future.

Requirements

Daily practice of using agentic AI coding (e.g., Claude Code) for hardware and other development.
Experience building systems that build code, including harnesses, loops, specs, and guardrails.
Experience building on real hardware, such as a shipped consumer product or custom-built device firmware.
Tinkerer and hardware hacker mindset, comfortable using tools like logic analyzers and soldering irons, and automating device control and observation.
Systems thinking approach, understanding the entire loop from device to cloud to agent.
Proven ability to build and ship projects independently, with active open-source contribution being a strong signal.
Willingness to use unproven approaches when conventional methods are too slow.
High degree of agency and drive, able to identify product needs and execute without explicit specifications.
Experience with AI-native engineering principles, where agents handle coding tasks and humans provide direction and judgment.

Nice To Haves

Previous leadership experience, such as directing a team or managing AI coworkers.

Responsibilities

Drive firmware and hardware development, initially focusing on the Ox Dot (boot, memory, audio pipeline, connectivity) and adapting to future devices.
Build the development harness, including APIs that allow agents to control devices end-to-end (flash, exercise, observe, assert, recover).
Establish 24/7 automated hardware testing using a fleet of real devices and Behavior-Driven Development scenarios.
Run the agentic software factory to automate the development, exercise, and self-triaging of devices by agents.
Own Over-The-Air (OTA) updates for the device fleet, ensuring safe, staged rollouts with rollback capabilities.
Write cloud services that the device communicates with, including memory and agent systems, authentication, and real-time streaming.
Develop user-facing app and web experiences.
Manage the pipeline for preparing devices for shipment, including provisioning, first-boot, and pairing.
Evaluate new hardware candidates, including teardowns and assessments.
Collaborate with partners on the supply chain and drive customizations for product shells and accessories.