Founding Systems Engineer Edge Hardware

## About the role Ideal start date is ASAP - role will be closed once a suitable candidate is found ## About the company Hi! 👋 My name is Sophia Millar. I'm the Co-Founder and CEO of Sonibel Instruments. We're a hardtech startup with the mission of modernizing manufacturing so we can keep up with the world's growing demand for urgent critical infrastructure, from skyscrapers to naval ships to grid expansions. At Sonibel Instruments we work hard. You'll get: - ⚙️ Autonomy and freedom. You pick your own projects, set your own goals, and work the hours you want - 🔧 Only important work. We're a small team so there's no busy work. You'll be leading mission critical projects from the ground up - 🤖 Fast, hands-on work across functions. Every week comes with new problems, new skills, and real things to build - 💡 Decisions based on data. Everyone at every level is trusted to make decisions and experiment - 💰 Competitive compensation through salary and equity so you'll own your work - 🦾 Leaders who own their mistakes, actively seek feedback to identify & solve them, and are pretty experienced. TL'DR: this isn't my first startup; I was on the founding team of two successful startups before Sonibel. One went through Y-Combinator. Then I launched two of my own. My co-founders George and Hooman are both cracked engineers who invented Sonibel's patented tech In the past 10 months, we've: - 💸 Raised over $1.6M USD - 👩‍🏭 Invented and patented a first-of-its-kind system - 🎉 Landed our first major Fortune 100 customer - 🏆 Had inbound requests from the biggest manufacturers in the world wanting to use our tool including Caterpillar, John Deere, Exxon, Komatsu, L&T, and more - 🎓 Graduated from the Creative Destruction Lab - 😎 And we just started growing the team past the 3 founders We're building the first ever complete real-time quality control system for welders. Our edge device is powered by acoustics: it listens to welds in real-time and alerts the welder if there's a defect. This can cut total project costs by 30% and save 2 months on a year-long timeline, making it cheaper and faster to build urgent critical infrastructure. With a $1.5 trillion manufacturing backlog and huge labour shortage, we're in high demand. ## Responsibilities You'll be doing and leading: - 🧠 System architecture - Own the system architecture across hardware, firmware, edge inference, cloud, security, and deployment workflows - Make architecture decisions across model performance, hardware constraints, cost, reliability, and manufacturability - Architect for the transition from prototype to pilots to repeatable commercial deployment - 🔩 Hardware and embedded systems - Own Sonibel's edge hardware system from sensor input to field-ready deployment - Make hardware decisions across sensors, signal conditioning, embedded compute, power, shielding, mounting, ruggedization, and industrial usability - Validate hardware for weld-shop conditions, including heat, EMI, vibration, cable routing, sensor placement, durability, and field failure modes - 💻 Firmware, edge software, and ML deployment - Build edge-device software for data acquisition, buffering, preprocessing, model handoff, local inference, and diagnostics - Own the sensor-to-model data path and make on-device ML reliable within latency, memory, and hardware constraints - Work with our CTO, George on ML/edge integration, bridging model requirements with embedded hardware and field deployment constraints - 🌐 Backend, fleet management, and device operations - Build backend and fleet-management systems for deployed devices, including registration, secure data upload, telemetry, logs, remote diagnostics, OTA updates, rollback, and version tracking - Build the edge-to-cloud data pipeline that turns field deployments into usable product and ML feedback - Build deployment and support tools for configuration, calibration, diagnostics, firmware updates, pilot monitoring, and field support - 🔐 Security, cybersecurity, and compliance - Own device, cloud, and data security for industrial deployments, including credentials, access control, encryption, auditability, and safe data handling - Drive hardware compliance for commercial deployment, including electrical safety, EMC/EMI, wireless/connectivity, labeling, documentation, and test readiness - 📦 BOM, procurement, and manufacturing setup - Own component selection, BOM management, supplier decisions, procurement, and replacement-part strategy - Set up early manufacturing, including vendors, assembly processes, production documentation, test fixtures, calibration, acceptance testing, and QA workflows - 🏭 Field reliability, pilots, and debugging - Make Sonibel's device reliable in real weld-shop conditions, including heat, EMI, vibration, rough handling, poor connectivity, and inconsistent installs - Own customer pilots and high-stakes deployments from install through monitoring, including setup, sensor placement, configuration, debugging, and maintenance - Account for safety-critical installation and failure modes in live welding environments - Build fault detection, recovery, logging, and root-cause debugging workflows for field failures - Debug failures across hardware, firmware, connectivity, data quality, and user workflow in live industrial environments - Work with our CPO, Hooman on hardware reliability, product readiness, and deployment in real industrial environments These will change based on what's working best in the field. Overall, we want someone to own the full arc from MVP to reliable customer deployment. You'll work directly alongside our CPO, Hooman and collaborate with the ML team when needed. ## Requirements The ideal candidate: - 🩺 Wants to build hardware/software systems that work in the real world, on a shop floor, around welding equipment, inside noisy industrial environments, not just on a bench or in a lab - ⚡ Cares about reliability, latency, power, memory, cost, and manufacturability and is excited to build around physical and business constraints - 💻 Is comfortable moving across hardware, firmware, embedded Linux, backend systems, and field deployment