Sr. Manager, Hardware Development, Fauna

Description

We are seeking a Sr. Manager, Hardware Development to lead full hardware development of a next-generation robot platform — a safety-certifiable system targeting aggressive cost optimization and large-scale deployment for autonomous operation. You will own mechanical, electrical, compute, and sensor hardware from architecture definition through engineering validation and into manufacturing.

In this role, you will lead a multi-disciplinary hardware engineering team through some of the most challenging problems in robotics. This includes migrating to a cost-optimized compute architecture, rationalizing the sensor suite for safety certification, and executing DFM transitions that achieve high production tooling coverage.

The ideal candidate has led hardware teams through full product development cycles for complex electromechanical systems, has deep experience with cost-down engineering and manufacturing scale-up, and brings either robotics, consumer electronics, or automotive safety-critical systems experience.

• Lead the complete hardware development of the next-generation platform from architecture through mass production, managing mechanical, electrical, compute, and sensor subsystem teams.
• Drive compute architecture migration to a cost-optimized, safety-certifiable platform — owning chip selection, carrier board design, and thermal management.
• Define and execute sensor suite optimization that meets safety certification requirements while achieving cost targets.
• Own the mechanical design evolution: lighter weight structure, injection molded/die cast/stamped components, and assembly design for manufacturing efficiency.
• Achieve aggressive BOM cost reduction (>50% from current platform) through DFM execution, supplier negotiations, and design trade-offs.
• Lead safety architecture hardware implementation including redundant systems, functional safety concepts, and compliance with home-use safety standards.
• Manage manufacturing bring-up with contract manufacturer support, targeting thousands of units.
• Drive reliability and durability testing program ensuring robots survive sustained autonomous operation in uncontrolled environments.
• Build, mentor, and manage a hardware engineering team across actuators, sensors, compute, battery/power, and mechanical design.
• Coordinate with software and science teams to ensure hardware decisions support the autonomous software stack (compute budget, sensor placement, latency requirements).
• Own the battery and charging system development for extended autonomous operation.
• Manage hardware development schedule, risk register, and resource allocation across parallel work streams.