Senior Director, Hardware & Vehicle Development

DoorDash USA•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

DoorDash Labs is a team within DoorDash building autonomous delivery robots from the ground up as part of DoorDash's core delivery platform. Our mission is to make autonomous last-mile delivery a reality at city scale — reliably, efficiently, and profitably. With autonomy proven on real sidewalks, we are now focused on scaling our hardware platform from hundreds of deployed robots to thousands and beyond, with a global expansion roadmap through 2030. We are looking for a Senior Director of Hardware and Vehicle Development to own the full hardware lifecycle at DoorDash Labs — from detailed product engineering through volume manufacturing and field service. In your first 90 days, you will get deeply embedded with the engineering and manufacturing teams, lead the selection of a contract manufacturing partner, and develop a lean hiring plan to fill key gaps. A year from now, success looks like a scaled hardware organization, with a clear path to robot profitability and a team that can sustain growth without you being the bottleneck on every decision.

Requirements

15+ years of experience in hardware, automotive, or a closely related field, with at least 4-5 years leading a hardware organization at the senior director or VP level
Taken a hardware program from early development through volume manufacturing — ideally building something from scratch where you had to develop new approaches rather than inherit mature processes
Track record of building high-performing teams and bringing exceptional people with you — your former colleagues want to come work for you again
Selected and managed contract manufacturers and know what a strong CM relationship requires from selection through production ramp
Comfortable operating in a fast-moving environment with aggressive timelines, and you know how to identify which processes add value and which ones to skip

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end hardware: lead engineering, manufacturing, and field service for our autonomous robot platform, with direct accountability for hitting scale milestones
Build the team: shape the hardware organization from the ground up, with the authority and budget to bring in exceptional talent — including people from your own network
Partner across the company: work closely with autonomy, product, and operations teams to translate system requirements into hardware decisions and manufacturing reality
Drive profitability: lead the shift from proving the technology to reducing cost and improving efficiency, with robot-level profitability as a near-term goal
Operate with real ownership: this is not a coordination role — you will set the roadmap, make the calls, and be accountable for outcomes in a program that is moving fast and has visible impact