Founding Hardware Engineer
Clera
Job Description
Job Description
About the Role
Join a recently funded founding team as its first hardware engineer, taking a prototype device from concept through production. You will own the hardware journey, from board design and manufacturing through quality assurance, and help deliver a reliable product at scale. Your technical decisions will directly shape the product customers receive.
What You'll DoIterate on PCB revisions, optimizing layout, power delivery, RF performance, size, reliability, and cost.
Move hardware from prototype toward production by addressing design for manufacturability, test strategy, supplier selection, assembly logistics, and scaling challenges.
Identify and communicate risks early, using practical experience to help prevent costly mistakes.
Own hardware quality and the standards applied to every unit that ships.
Work directly with the founding team to build and ship the product.
Experience designing PCBs that have shipped in a real product, ideally in wearables, IoT, or consumer electronics.
Experience taking a device from prototype to production, or strong early-career fundamentals and the ability to move quickly with AI tools.
Hands-on skills in PCB layout and optimizing power, RF performance, size, reliability, and cost.
Comfort with design for manufacturability, test design, supplier management, and assembly processes.
Ability to anticipate and communicate manufacturing and scaling challenges; specific domain expertise is not required.
Visa sponsorship is available.
LocationOn-site in San Francisco, California, United States.
- ...Area, California | Fully On-site We are seeking an Founding Computer Vision Engineer – Multimodal AI & VLMs to join an early-stage technology... ...role focuses on multimodal visual intelligence running in hardware-constrained environments and supporting complex physical...SuggestedWork at officeVisa sponsorship
- ...modern data centers. Backed by a strong technical founding team, they’re building innovative systems that... ...optical modules and push the limits of hardware performance. They’re now looking for a Hardware Design Engineer who’s excited to tackle complex system design...Suggested
- ...Job Description Job Description We’re looking for hardware engineers with hands-on experience in chip design workflows—ideally those who have contributed to real-world tapeouts at companies like Apple, NVIDIA, Etched, or leading EDA vendors such as Synopsys or Cadence...SuggestedFull timeNight shift
- ...ABOUT THE ROLE Design engineer who owns the full visual and interactive experience of Jinba's platform. You'll build our design system... ...ship production code alongside the engineering team. This is a founding design role for someone who wants to shape how enterprise users...Suggested
- ...global fund, YC, and founders of billion dollar companies. Design Engineering About We're building the future of storytelling and video... ...feel is not a finishing touch. It's the product. We're hiring a Founding Design Engineer who lives at that intersection: someone who...Suggested
- ...the quality and ambition of our company behind it. As Orchard's Founding Design Engineer, you will establish the design function and own design across product, brand, marketing, software engineering, hardware, and our physical environments. You will work directly with...Weekend work
- ...this is only the beginning. ERPs ran the physical world for half a century. Dryft is powering the next. THE ROLE As Founding Design Engineer , you’ll work directly with our CEO, CTO, and customers to build magical user interfaces for our AI Agents. Your...Relocation
- ...AI behaves in live customer conversations, and measure the impact on real business outcomes. The role We're hiring a founding design engineer to own the experience of BotBot and the system we run the company on. Our products need interfaces for work that...Remote work
$180k - $220k
...Seed stage startup built on deep pricing experience from our founding team who have run over 150 pricing engagements. We’ve seen firsthand... .... We have assembled our team of 8 (pricing experts and engineers) to deliver that capability. Our main hubs are San Francisco...Work experience placementWork at officeImmediate startVisa sponsorshipFlexible hours- ...Founding Design Engineer Company Description Lightsage builds infrastructure for the emerging agent economy, helping organizations track, benchmark, and improve how coding agents discover and use their APIs, CLIs, and MCP integrations. The platform is used by enterprises...Full time
- ...building the definitive platform for understanding and improving how engineering teams work. We believe the way engineering output is measured... ...May and are looking to accelerate our growth. As Weave's Founding Design Engineer, your job is to make complex engineering data...Work at office
$140k - $180k
...contracts through legal at record speed, with transparency, predictable pricing, and exceptional quality. We're hiring a Founding Product Engineer to build the platform that’s reinventing how legal work gets done. You’ll sit next to attorneys and AI engineers, turning...Work at office- ...building the definitive platform for understanding and improving how engineering teams work. We believe the way engineering output is measured... ...Capital, IrregEx and the Agent Fund. We’re now hiring a Founding Product Engineer to help define the product and the technical...Work at officeImmediate start
- ...for higher-value work. You will work across product, design, engineering, and implementation. Some days that means mapping how tax... ...without adding headcount. Why Cranston ~ Cranston was founded by Sean O'Bannon and Max Minsker to rebuild the accounting firm...
- ...I'm looking for a Founding Product Engineer to join me at GloweUp. GloweUp is an early-stage femtech company building at the intersection of women's hormonal health, skincare, data, and AI. We're developing a consumer platform designed to help women better understand...
$150k - $200k
...VOYGR (YC W26) | Founding Product Engineer | San Francisco | ONSITE | Full-time | $150K-$200K + 0.5%-2.0% equity I'm Yarik, cofounder and CTO. Before this I spent 20 years in tech with 10+ years running infra, ML and search teams at Google, Meta and Apple. We love...Full timeNight shiftWeekend work- ...Seed stage startup built on deep pricing experience from our founding team who have run over 150 pricing engagements. We’ve seen firsthand... .... We have assembled our team of 8 (pricing experts and engineers) to deliver that capability. Our main hubs are San Francisco...Contract work
$100k - $200k
...Coval Simulation & Evaluation that scales voice and chat AI agents Founding Product Engineer $100K - $200K • 0.20% - 1.50% • San Francisco, CA, US Job type: Full-time Role: Engineering, Full stack Experience: 1+ years Visa: US citizen/visa only...Full timeWork at office- ...building personal AIhardware — it runs your agents locally, on hardware you own.Private by physics, not by promise. We hire rarely... ....We build for people's lives — including our own. Founding AI/ML Engineer San Francisco · Full-time Make frontier-quality intelligence...Full timeLocal area
- ...candidate profiles across active roles and use resumes/profiles to understand which backgrounds may be a fit. THE ROLE As a Founding Product Engineer, you may work on projects that require strong execution, communication, analytical judgment, and the ability to move...
- ...Founding Product Engineer — Smart Bricks (USA Launch) Location: San Francisco, CA Type: Full-time Team: Founding Team (USA) Smart Bricks is building the world’s AI-native real estate investment infrastructure. Think of us as Bloomberg + Robinhood for global real estate...Full time
- ...investors including Guillermo Rauch, and we're in the YC Spring 2026 batch. The team is me ( Ray , founder/CEO) and Sid , founding engineer. We're YC-backed , have more inbound than we can ship, a roadmap that's growing faster than we can build, and a clear vision for...RelocationVisa sponsorshipDay shift
$150k - $185k
...185,000.00/yr This is a permanent (FTE) position that will be hired directly by an Insight Global client Job Summary: Hardware Engineer - San Francisco, CA We're seeking a proactive and skilled engineer who thrives in a dynamic, fast-paced, hands-on environment...Permanent employmentFull time- ...in Silicon Valley, femtoAI —formerly known as Femtosense—was founded in 2018 by researchers from the Brains in Silicon Lab at... ...power of AI to everyday devices. Job Description As a Hardware Engineer, you will join femtoAI’s hardware team to help design and build...Work experience placement
- ...systems behind our research, from in-house EMG and contact-sensing hardware to the robot fleet used for evaluation. The work spans fast... ...electrical, embedded, mechanical, mechatronics, or robotics engineering. Experience taking electromechanical hardware from schematic...Contract work
- ...Eridu is a Silicon Valley-based hardware startup pioneering infrastructure solutions that accelerate AI data centers to deliver Faster... ...). The company is in execution mode and has a world‑class engineering team with decades of experience in state‑of‑the‑art silicon, packaging...
$145k - $250k
...Meter builds networking hardware that businesses depend on to stay connected. Our products need to work flawlessly in the field, and delivering them requires tight coordination across engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain. We are building the next generation of...Night shift$200k - $250k
...enterprise customers. The company is growing rapidly and is building its second major product. The role We are hiring a Founding AI Product Engineer to work directly with the founders on that next product. This is a high-ownership role for someone who can ship quickly,...Full timeRelocationVisa sponsorship- ...You’ll collaborate with construction veterans and world-class engineers to solve physical-world problems that simulations can’t touch.... ...autonomous construction machines and we’re looking for a talented hardware engineer to help define system architecture, test and...Temporary workWork at officeFlexible hours
$180k - $220k
...Job Description Job Description About the Role This is a founding-level, high-ownership position sitting at the intersection of design and engineering. You'll be the sole bar-raiser for frontend UX across a fast-moving, early-stage B2B SaaS company building an AI-...Remote work
Do you want to receive more vacancies?
Subscribe and receive similar vacancies to Founding Hardware Engineer. Be the first to apply!
- computer engineer full time San Francisco, CA
- computer hardware engineer San Francisco, CA
- power electronics hardware engineer San Francisco, CA
- hardware design engineer San Francisco, CA
- computer engineer San Francisco, CA
- computer vision engineer San Francisco, CA
- hardware electronics engineer San Francisco, CA
- digital hardware engineer San Francisco, CA
- hardware engineer San Francisco, CA
- computer engineering coop


