Chief Product Engineer / VP, Product Development
Listed on 2026-08-19
-
Engineering
Product Engineer
Jump Lights spent ten years building the LED grow lights commercial cannabis and greenhouse growers actually trust, including the industry's first purpose-built under-canopy fixture and a patented thermal architecture that powers over-canopy lights. The company is now shipping across five product families and launching multiple new fixtures every year, and it needs a builder who can own the full lifecycle of every product from concept to customer.
This is a hands-on chief product engineer role at a small, mission-driven company, not a management seat at a large one. You will join the executive team, report to the CEO, and be part of the company's long-term succession plan.
If you want a comfortable role at a well-established company, this is not it. If you want to build products growers depend on and help shape where Jump Lights goes next, keep reading.
What you will own- End-to-end product ownership. Design and ship products across every family, including ETS MAX, Catalyst, Vert, Lumia, and lighting controllers. Own components, performance specs, roadmap, and continuous improvement.
- New product development. Lead from concept through launch, hands-on across system-level design, prototyping, testing, and production readiness.
- Certification. Run certification for new and existing products with Underwriters Laboratories (UL), ETL, Design Lights Consortium (DLC), and equivalent bodies.
- Change management. Build and maintain the engineering change management system that keeps product updates traceable, reviewed, and correctly documented.
- Vendors and supply chain. Select and manage vendors, contract manufacturers, design partners, contract engineers, and part-time contributors across the US and Asia.
- Quality. Define incoming and outgoing product and component specifications and help manage compliance.
- Executive partnership. Partner directly with the CEO, COO, and the rest of the executive team on company strategy, customer relationships, and the decisions that shape where Jump Lights goes next.
- Knowledge. Bachelor's in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, mechatronics, or industrial engineering. Master's is a plus.
- Experience. Five or more years of hands-on product development, with at least one physical product you personally took from concept to market. Ten or more years is preferred.
- Vendors. Direct experience managing vendors, contract engineers, and external contributors.
- Certification. Hands-on experience running product certification such as UL, ETL and DLC.
- System design. System-level design experience across electrical or mechanical domains, and ideally both.
- Builder's instinct. You would rather prototype something than write a memo about it, and you have the technical depth to design at the system level yourself, not just review someone else's work.
- Innovation. Rather than just designing to spec, you come up with breakthrough concepts and approaches to create industry-leading products.
- Startup temperament. Comfortable with ambiguity, a small team, and doing whatever the moment requires. You have done this before, or you know that you want to.
- Executive presence with humility. You are ready to earn the trust of the team over time, contribute at the leadership level from day one, and grow into a larger role as the company grows.
- Reliability depth. Strong background in reliability engineering and design for manufacturability (DFM), with a track record of shipping products that hold up in the field.
- Supply chain range. Comfortable working with Asian manufacturers and supply chains, including managing quality remotely.
- CAD and simulation. Mechanical CAD (Solid Works, OnShape) or electrical CAD (Altium, Eagle), and ideally both. Simulation across mechanical (ANSYS, COMSOL), electrical (LTspice, PSpice), or optical domains is a plus.
- AgTech curiosity. Background in horticultural or agricultural technology, or a genuine interest in learning it quickly. Able to explain technical tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders, including customers, sales, and the Board.
- The portfolio. Own the full product portfolio at a category-defining hardware company with real…
(If this job is in fact in your jurisdiction, then you may be using a Proxy or VPN to access this site, and to progress further, you should change your connectivity to another mobile device or PC).