Principal, Hardware Engineer

Who We Are:

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're a small team of ~10 engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.

Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate - small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.

In addition to our San Francisco lab, we opened our Detroit manufacturing hub and field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.

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. You've done it more than once. You know where systems break, where teams get stuck, and how to keep both moving.

This is a technical leadership seat, not a people management seat. Your role is to raise the level of the hardware org through experience, architectural judgement, and hands-on execution. You lead by example, you unblock hard problems, and you set the technical bar for how hardware gets designed and shipped at Aurelius.

You'll partner with the founders and the Director of Engineering on architecture and roadmap. You'll work directly alongside mechanical, electrical, power, embedded, and optics engineers on the hardest problems the team is facing.

• 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

• Hands-on 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. Engineers should learn from watching you work, not from being managed by you

• 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 judgement 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

• Directed energy, laser, or high-power systems experience

• Defense or aerospace program experience with MIL-STD or equivalent qualification

• Founder or founding engineer background at a hardware company

• Manufacturing depth as-in you've stood up production lines or worked closely with the manufacturers who do

• Active security clearance or ability to obtain one

• Extreme bias for action. You'd rather build a prototype tomorrow than model it for a month

• You characterize your own systems before the field does

• Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment

• You debug from first principles, not intuition alone

• Clear…