Impress employers and recruiters.
Choose from hundreds of resume examples.

Target Resume Now

About the Role

We need a Principal Hardware Engineer to bring senior technical judgment across Archimedes hardware. You are a highly experienced builder who has seen systems go the full way, from a working prototype to hardware that ships and survives in the field. This is a technical leadership seat focused on raising the level of the hardware organization through experience, architectural judgment, and hands-on execution. You will partner with the founders and the Director of Engineering on architecture and roadmap, and work directly alongside other engineering disciplines on challenging problems.

Responsibilities

Architectural direction across the hardware stack from mechanical, electrical, power, to embedded integration
Technical decisions on the hardest problems, from concept through production readiness
Pattern recognition and technical review like surfacing risk early, and catching what junior engineers miss
Handson execution when the problem needs your specific experience to solve fast
Design and manufacturing trades across cost, mass, reliability, schedule, and field performance
Cross-team judgment when hardware, controls, optics, and software collide
Setting the technical bar for design reviews, documentation quality, and release standards
Mentorship by example, enabling engineers to learn from your work

Requirements

10+ years designing and shipping complex hardware systems
Track record taking systems the full development cycle from prototype through manufacturing and deployment
Senior IC or technical leadership background at hardware companies that actually shipped
Deep technical judgment across at least two of: mechanical, electrical, power electronics, embedded systems
Pattern recognition from having built real systems before, especially systems that had to survive real-world conditions
Comfort operating as the technical anchor on a small team, not the manager of a large one
Extreme bias for action; prefer building a prototype tomorrow over modeling it for a month
Characterize your own systems before the field does
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment
Debug from first principles, not intuition alone
Clear communicator across mechanical, electrical, optical, and software teams
Self-directed; identify and execute necessary tasks without explicit instruction
This role requires access to export-controlled information or items that require U.S. Person status (U.S. citizen, legal permanent resident, or certain protected classes of asylees and refugees)

Skills

Mechanical engineering
Electrical engineering
Power electronics
Embedded systems
Directed energy
Laser systems
High-power systems
Defense program experience
Aerospace program experience
MIL-STD qualification
Manufacturing
Hardware system design
Hardware system shipping
System development lifecycle
Prototype development
Manufacturing deployment
Technical leadership
Architectural judgment
Hands-on execution
Risk assessment
Design and manufacturing trade-offs
Cross-team collaboration
Design reviews
Documentation quality
Release standards
Mentorship

Location

San Francisco
Detroit

Work Type

Onsite
Full-time

Experience Level

Principal
Senior

Salary/Compensations

Competitive salary and equity

Benefits

United Health Care medical, dental, and vision coverage
Flexible 18 days PTO plus 5 sick days
Travel to field test events and range days
Covered daily lunches and office snacks and drinks
E-bike and scooter stipend up to $500
Direct access to leadership and real ownership over your work

About the Company

Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS.
We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.
We are a small team of ~10 engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance.
We aim to be the first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.
Our namesake, Marcus Aurelius, inspires our approach: doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses.
We operate with a small team, unreasonable output, and no hiding behind the unachievable.
We have a San Francisco lab and a Detroit manufacturing hub, with weekly field tests on our own 400-acre private range.