Hardware Engineering Manager

As a Hardware Engineering Manager, you will lead a small multidisciplinary team building and hardening Lendurai's flight platforms. You will own the hardware roadmap and execution cadence, driving reliable integration and disciplined iteration across mechanics, electronics, RF, compute, and sensors while improving processes, test rigor, and build repeatability.

What you will be doing

• Lead a multidisciplinary team (Flight Platform Engineers, Product Engineers, Electronics Engineers) and set clear ownership, goals, and an execution cadence.

• Own the end-to-end hardware roadmap for Lendurai's flight platforms, including requirements, architecture, interfaces, and system trade-offs.

• Drive fast, disciplined iteration through build plans, testing processes, configuration control, and decision logs.

• Ensure reliable integration across mechanics, electronics, RF links, compute, sensors, and firmware, and unblock root-cause issues quickly.

• Define and run verification and reliability strategy, including test plans, acceptance criteria, flight-test instrumentation, incident tracking, and regression coverage.

• Partner with software/ML teams to turn field findings into prioritized engineering work and ensure hardware observability for rapid debugging.

• Plan and support field test events and defence demos, ensuring safety-first operations, readiness checklists, and post-event reporting.

• Partner with supply chain specialist to execute prototyping and sourcing, aligning engineering requirements with vendor selection, lead times, and quality gates.

• Build team capability and culture through hiring, coaching, performance management, and high standards.

Required skills

• At least BSc in an engineering discipline such as mechatronics, aerospace, or robotics, plus hands-on experience shipping real hardware.

• At least 3 years of experience managing hardware or systems engineers.

• Ability to translate customer and field needs into requirements, interfaces, and system architecture, and make clear trade-offs and decisions.

• Strong root-cause problem solving using structured debugging, hypotheses, and controlled tests.

• Experience running a disciplined hardware development process with configuration/change control, revision management, and build-quality standards while maintaining iteration speed.

• Clear, unambiguous communication in English.

Nice to have

• Built or supported UAV, robotics, or mobile autonomy platforms in the field.

• Familiar with PX4/ArduPilot, MAVLink tooling, and turning flight logs/telemetry into engineering actions.

• Practical RF experience, including antenna integration, interference troubleshooting, and improving link reliability.

• Experience taking hardware from prototype to small-batch production.

• Experience working with defence or public sector customers.

• Experience leading cross-site partners or OEM integrations.

What we offer

• Monthly gross salary based on experience and impact

• Stock options

• Ability to influence major technical decisions as an early hire

• A focus on outcomes