Chief Product Engineer

Germantown, Maryland
· On-site
· Reports to CEO, John Peeler
· Executive team
· About 15 people and growing

Own every product Jump Lights ships, from concept through certification to the customer. A hands‑on chief engineer seat on the executive team of a patented agtech life sciences company.

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.

• 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…