Lead Hardware Systems Engineer

Lead Hardware Systems Engineer | Join the team behind a $3.2B smart-home exit, now taking on food waste | SF Bay Area (Onsite) | $195K–$255K base

We've partnered with a Bay Area hardware company on one of the most exciting missions in climate tech: eliminating waste, starting with food. The pedigree is serious: the founders previously created one of the defining products of the smart-home era, a company acquired by Google for around $3.2 billion, and have brought the same design obsession to food waste. Their connected appliances turn food scraps into shelf-stable grounds and keep them out of landfill. The market has responded: the consumer product is already in tens of thousands of kitchens, and with a commercial launch landing in 2027, next year is set for real growth. They are backed at Series C by a heavyweight group of climate and tech investors, including Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund.

This is a rare opportunity to own the physical heart of that product. As Lead Systems Engineer, you'll help ideate, test and define the next generation of their commercial food recycler, the thermal and fluid processes that dry and grind food waste efficiently and reliably at industrial scale. It's a hands-on role on a small team, working shoulder to shoulder with electrical, mechanical, algorithms and product engineers to take world-class industrial hardware from concept through to production. If you love interdisciplinary problems spanning thermal, fluids and chemical processes, and want your work to keep real food waste out of landfill, this is the seat.

The Role

As Lead Systems Engineer, you will:

• Own system performance as tech lead for the test engineers, optimising and characterising temperatures, flow rates and heat transfer to push energy efficiency and throughput, and drawing the conclusions and next steps out of the experimental data.
• Work with algorithms and firmware to develop control schemes that cut energy use and drying time while keeping the system reliable.
• Direct external CFD, thermal and multiphysics simulation to sharpen the design, and keep finding ways to improve performance and reliability.
• Define the requirements for components such as fans, condensers, heaters, flow meters and sensors, and work with mechanical engineers to optimise the custom hardware at the core of the drying and grinding chamber, from mixing paddles to air deflectors to cutting and shredding technology.
• Partner with operations and global supply chain on sourcing to spec at production volumes, and help move prototypes and bench proof-of-concepts into high-volume manufacturing.

About You

• You have 5+ years hands-on as a systems engineer, or in a lead role, with significant thermal and fluid-handling work, ideally including taking new processes from concept through to production.
• You work naturally across disciplines, interfacing with electrical, mechanical, thermal and controls engineers, with strong written, verbal and graphical communication.
• You have hands-on experience with electromechanical integration and part selection such as blowers, valves, fans and sensors.
• You can use Python to analyse time-series data (R, AI tooling and other approaches are fine too).
• You have managed cross-functional engineering projects spanning several technical disciplines.
• You have a BS or MS in a related field, ideally Process, Thermal, Mechanical or Chemical Engineering, with a Master's or higher preferred.
• Some prior startup experience is highly preferred.
• You are based in or willing to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area and happy to work onsite, given the hands-on nature of the work.

The role pays a competitive base plus a potential equity grant, and the team is moving quickly. If you want to lead the systems engineering behind beautifully built hardware that keeps food out of landfill, apply now or send your CV directly to [email protected].