The roleCoram builds physical security hardware: cameras, door-access controllers, intercoms. Real boxes that get screwed to walls in schools and offices, with electronics and AI inside them.
The access-control line is already shipping and installed at customer sites. You inherit it, keep it healthy, and then build the next two product lines from concept to mass production: edge-enabled cameras and intercoms. We want both inside a year. The industry norm for a single hardware cycle is 9 to 12 months, so that target is deliberately aggressive.
You are the first dedicated hardware leader at the company. The engineer who built the access-control line has moved up to lead Product, so the function is yours to own and to build.
How we buildDesign happens in Sunnyvale. Manufacturing sits with specialist contract manufacturing partners, who build, test and certify the finished product to our design.
That makes this job mostly engineering and part partnership management, across a long distance and several time zones. You will have a small design team here and a much larger group on the manufacturing side. Getting excellent product out of that arrangement is a craft, and it is the part of the role that matters most.
What you'll own- The shipping access-control line: quality, field performance, change control, ongoing cost.
- Two new product lines end to end. Concept, design, EVT through PVT, certification, ramp, mass production.
- The contract manufacturer relationship. You own it directly, including the design transfer package and everything in it.
- Hands-on engineering. CAD and drawings, or schematics and board bring-up, depending on where you spike.
- The processes the function runs on: stage gates, quality systems, supplier qualification, test protocols.
- Two hardware engineering hires this year, and a team after that.
What we're looking for- At least five years in production mechanical or electrical engineering. Spike in one of them. We have no preference which.
- You have personally shipped a product through an external contract manufacturer at volume. Not worked at a company that did it. You did it, and you can talk in detail about the partner, the product and the numbers involved.
- You owned that factory relationship yourself, rather than handing your design to a TPM or a manufacturing engineer at the transfer point.
- You have owned a full design transfer package: CAD, BOM, assembly instructions, test procedures, quality criteria, drawings.
- You have taken products through certification. FCC at minimum. CE and UL are relevant to what we build.
- You have shipped fast under constraint, and can talk about what you chose to cut to hit a date, and about a timeline that slipped and what you changed afterwards.
- You have built a process that outlived you. A quality system, a stage gate, change control, supplier qualification. Ideally because you saw a gap and nobody asked you to.
- You have grown engineers, and can point at specific people and where they are now.
Bonus points- Low-voltage connected devices: drones, wearables, body cameras, security cameras, smart home. Anything where a partner delivered you a finished, boxed unit rather than parts you assembled in-house.
- At a large company, ownership of a whole product rather than one component. Platform design engineering, or the equivalent.
- Edge compute, imaging sensors or DSP experience.
