Lead the hardware engineering team to design and scale intelligent machines for food production, aiming to deploy 1,000 robot systems globally.
Chef Robotics is accelerating the deployment of intelligent machines in the physical world, starting with food production—a sector facing the largest labor shortage in the U.S., with 1.14M unfilled jobs today and 3.1M projected by 2030. These roles cannot be offshored, making robotics essential to keeping production onshore and strengthening America’s manufacturing base. Backed by investors like Kleiner Perkins, Construct, Bloomberg Beta, and Promus Ventures, and supported by a world-class team from companies such as Cruise, Zoox, Google, Tesla, and Amazon Robotics, Chef is rapidly scaling with multiple multi-year contracts and a mission to put an intelligent robot in every commercial kitchen.
In this role, you'll be a partner to lead the hardware engineering team (and, depending on the candidate, perhaps also the manufacturing/supply chain team). Our next goal is to build and scale to 1,000 robot systems worldwide.
What you'll do
Oversee Chef's hardware engineering org
Help execute as a player coach
Help expand the set of ingredients that Chef can manipulate (e.g., sticky cheese, fruit, piece picking, etc.)
Help design and build Chef's next-gen system
Help improve reliability / MTBF for Chef's current systems in the field
Help reduce BOM
Help set technical direction for HW team
(Depending on the candidate) Oversee Chef's manufacturing and supply chain team and help scale to 250, 500, and then 1000 robots in production.
Help be on Chef's leadership team. Represent HW team and also help Chef make the right company-level decisions.
Help hire and build a team as needed
Help fundraise
Requirements
Masters or Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or physics
Has shipped 3+ (at least 2) products to market
Has seen at least one product scale to tens of thousands of users/customers
Has lead manufacturing (or managed someone who lead manufacturing)
Has lead supply chain and procurement (or managed someone who lead supply chain and procurement)
Has 10+ years of production engineering experience as an IC, tech lead, or manager
Has managed and lead teams in: Manufacturing, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Firmware
Has worked with Perception / computer vision, Machine learning, Robotics motion planning and control
Has been a manager of a team of engineers and a manager of managers (two layers)
Has been part of at least one startup
Has scaled an engineering team from 5 people to 15 to 45 people
Understand the business logic and the business
Can sell and convince top A-level hires to join the company
Can represent the company and sell the company to investors for prospective investors
Can be onsite in our SF office
