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Applied Intuition is a $15B-valued AI infrastructure company bringing physical intelligence to autonomous heavy industrial vehicles. As Hardware Systems Lead for Industrials, you will be the hands-on chief engineer responsible for the complete hardware architecture—mechanical and electrical—that runs on mining, agriculture, and construction equipment. You will own the critical question: will it survive in the harshest environments?
You will architect, prototype, build, test, and iterate on hardware systems that must withstand extreme vibration, shock, dust, water ingress, thermal extremes, EMI, and years of heavy use. This is not a desk role: you'll spend significant time in the field at mine sites, farms, and customer facilities, installing and debugging systems on real machines alongside customers and site operators.
Key responsibilities include:
- Own end-to-end hardware architecture (mechanical and electrical) for industrial vehicle programs
- Design and run environmental and durability testing; analyze failures and drive root-cause fixes
- Lead integration of sensors (lidar, radar, cameras, GNSS/IMU), compute, power, networking, and actuation onto OEM heavy equipment
- Understand host machine systems (powertrain, electrohydraulics, vehicle electrical architecture, CAN/J1939) to integrate safely and reliably
- Serve as technical authority and escalation point for hardware tradeoffs across mechanical, electrical, software, and test disciplines
- Lead hardware design reviews, set engineering standards, and mentor other engineers
- Interface with industrial customers as a representative of the hardware organization
- Support field deployments and commissioning at customer facilities
Applied Intuition expects full-time employees to work primarily in-office (5 days/week) from the Sunnyvale headquarters, with flexibility for occasional remote work and schedule adjustments as needed.
REQUIREMENTS:
- BS/MS in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics, or related field
- 10+ years of hands-on hardware engineering experience on heavy industrial or off-highway vehicles (mining, agriculture, construction, or similar)
- Strong command of complete hardware systems: mechanical design, electrical architecture, power distribution, harness design, and their interactions
- Proven track record designing hardware to survive harsh environments, with real experience in vibration, shock, ingress protection, thermal management, and EMI
- Hands-on lab and field experience: building prototypes, wiring and debugging systems, running tests, diagnosing failures on real machines
- Deep knowledge of industrial machine operation: powertrains, hydraulics, braking, steering, CAN/J1939 networks
- Experience integrating hardware onto OEM or retrofit equipment
- Familiarity with autonomy hardware (lidar, radar, cameras, GNSS/IMU, ruggedized compute)
- Systems-level thinking and ability to make and defend architecture decisions
- Experience with reliability and qualification testing (environmental testing, HALT, field durability)
- Comfort working directly with OEMs, customers, and site operators, including extended time at mine sites and farms
NICE TO HAVE:
- Experience with functional safety or machine safety standards (ISO 25119, ISO 13849, ISO 17757, ISO 26262)
- Experience with autonomous haulage, precision agriculture, or other autonomous industrial systems
