Vice President of Engineering (Cincinnati)

Radenso Labs is an engineering-first company building advanced sensing technologies for commercial and defense applications. Our team develops complex physical products spanning RF, embedded systems, FPGA, DSP, AI/ML, and edge computing.

We’re a low-ego, collaborative team of curious problem-solvers who care about building well-crafted products and solving difficult technical problems. Our engineering team supports both established commercial products and a growing portfolio of defense programs, including actively funded development work.

We’re looking for a Vice President of Engineering to lead our engineering organization and own how product direction becomes successful engineering execution. This is a hardware engineering leadership role, and we’re looking for someone who is hardware-first but software-competent —a leader with deep experience developing physical products who also understands the software and embedded systems that bring them to life.

We are specifically looking for someone whose career has been grounded in electrical engineering, hardware engineering, embedded systems, or the development of complex physical products. You must have previously taken hardware from requirements and architecture through prototype, validation, manufacturing, and production. 

You’ll directly lead a multidisciplinary team of approximately ten engineers and work closely with our CEO, engineering leads, Program Management, and Project Management.

Your job will be to translate overall product direction and decisions from the CEO into clear technical requirements and plans to build products with a talented team.

What You’ll Own

Engineering Leadership

• Directly lead, manage, and develop our engineering team across electrical/hardware, RF, FPGA, embedded systems, software, AI/ML, and related disciplines.
• Stay close enough to the work to understand what each engineer is working on, how they are performing, and where they need support.
• Establish meaningful engineering goals and KPIs and hold the team accountable for results.
• Conduct regular 1:1s, annual performance reviews, and ongoing coaching and professional development. Additionally, identify future engineering resource needs and recruit talent. 

Engineering Execution

• Translate product direction from CEO into clear, measurable engineering requirements and technical targets, as well as ensure the right engineers are assigned to the right projects
• Collaborate with the team to provide reliable estimates for engineering effort, hardware cost, development timelines, and technical risk.
• Recognize when a solution is unnecessarily complicated and help the team find the simplest solution that meets the requirement.
• Partner closely with Program and Project Management to keep engineering execution predictable and accountable.

Technical & Hardware Leadership

• Own the full hardware product lifecycle, from initial concept and design through testing, validation, release, and ongoing post-launch support, as well as the establishment of quality and testing standards.
• Provide strong technical judgment across multidisciplinary product development.
• Lead technical and architectural reviews while effectively challenging and supporting engineers who may have deeper expertise in individual disciplines.
•   Understand complex digital and mixed signal system designs 
• Develop appropriate technical gates and review processes from concept through production.
• Ensure designs appropriately balance performance, reliability, manufacturability, cost, schedule, and complexity.

Product & Engineering Alignment

• Create an effective feedback and approval process between Engineering and company leadership.
• Turn product goals into realistic technical targets for cost, schedule, performance, and resources.
• Surface risks and constraints early rather than allowing engineering problems to become business surprises.
• Present leadership with clear technical tradeoffs and recommendations.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of electrical engineering/management experience with significant experience developing physical hardware products.
• Experience leading multidisciplinary teams that include electrical/hardware and embedded engineering.
• Strong technical intuition and the ability to evaluate engineering approaches outside your individual area of expertise.
• Experience with SOCs (FPGA-based preferred but not required) and comfortable with complex system architecture
• Experience making and communicating engineering tradeoffs involving cost, schedule, performance, reliability, and technical risk.
• Experience establishing engineering processes, design reviews, validation practices, and quality standards.
• Ability to estimate and manage engineering resources, development effort, and hardware costs.
• Excellent communication skills, particularly the ability to translate between engineers, product/business leadership, and program stakeholders.
• A low-ego leadership style and willingness to remain closely engaged with a small engineering team.
• Ability to work on-site in Cincinnati, Ohio, Monday through Friday.

Nice to Have:

• Understand FPGA-based systems well enough to evaluate architectures, ask the right technical questions, and lead engineers working in the space.
• Experience in: 
• RF systems
• Software-defined radio (SDR)
• Embedded systems and firmware
• DSP / signal processing
• PCB and hardware development
• Design for manufacturing and production
• Hardware qualification and compliance testing
• Edge computing and AI/ML

Benefits

• $175,000–$210,000 annual salary
• Full-time, salaried position
• On-site in Cincinnati, OH, Monday–Friday
• 6% 401(k) match, fully vested immediately
• Paid holidays, vacation, and sick leave
• Health, dental, vision, life insurance, and retirement benefits

Radenso Labs is committed to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, genetic information, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, marital status, non-job-related physical or mental disability, or protected veteran status.