Vice President of Engineering

Main Duties & Responsibilities: Lead and develop a cross-functional engineering organization spanning hardware, mechanical, R&D, firmware, application software, DevOps, and program management.- Set direction, goals, and development plans for each direct report; coach managers as people leaders and build a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and psychological safety.- Own engineering hiring across all disciplines, including hardware, mechanical, R&D, Python, DevOps, and program management, maintaining a high bar for talent at every level.- Drive org design as the team scales: define leadership needs, develop internal candidates, and build a bench that keeps pace with business growth.- Partner with the CTO on hardware technology strategy, advising on feasibility, technical risk, and development cost as the product roadmap evolves.- Hold team accountable for R&D exploration, NPI execution, and stage-gate exit criteria; stay close enough to the work to make sound calls on scope, schedule, and risk.- Ensure prototype findings, failure modes, and test data are translated into production-ready designs and processes.- Align with Product on systems architecture and hardware, firmware, and software integration; oversee test, calibration, and characterization standards.- Drive hardware delivery through the full product lifecycle, including design phases, prototyping, DFM, manufacturing readiness, and schedule confidence — managing trade-offs between performance, cost, manufacturability, and schedule.- Own engineering response to field performance data, including triage field returns, direct re-characterization efforts, and hold the team accountable for closing design and process improvements.- Oversee delivery of the customer-facing application suite, including API, database, web front-end, and mobile app, and partner with product team to maintain a realistic roadmap and ship on schedule.- Own build, deployment, and infrastructure outcomes, including CI/CD, environments, monitoring, reliability, and security.- Run cross-functional programs through the Program Manager with clear scope, milestones, risk registers, and schedule visibility; hold regular reviews that surface issues early.- Hold team accountable for full manufacturing readiness, including DFM complete, build SOPs written, test fixtures built, traceability in place, and operator training complete before release to production.- Monitor production yield and quality data through the Production Manager; escalate and resource issues that require engineering involvement and feed field return data back into design improvements.- Own the engineering budget, including NRE forecasts, tooling costs, software licensing, and infrastructure spend.- Partner with Product, Quality, Regulatory, Operations, Sales, and Finance to translate business objectives into executable engineering strategies and realistic delivery plans.- Report engineering health, including roadmap delivery, schedule confidence, quality, and cost to the CTO and executive team, and represent engineering at the executive and board level.