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Prolific Machines is developing an optogenetic platform that uses light to deliver unprecedented control over cellular behavior, enabling advances in pharmaceutical manufacturing and therapeutic protein production. The company is backed by leading investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mayfield, and SOSV.
You will lead the hardware engineering function as it scales from early-stage R&D to production-ready systems. This is a hands-on leadership role combining strategic direction with deep technical involvement in optical systems, robotic automation, and biological characterization.
Key responsibilities include:
**Strategy & Leadership**: Translate company strategy into multi-year hardware roadmaps and functional plans. Partner with the CTO on technical direction, engineering standards, and decision frameworks. Contribute to business planning around budgets, headcount, and capital equipment. Build cross-functional partnerships with bioprocess engineering, biology, software, data, and business development teams. Represent Prolific externally with partners and suppliers.
**Team Development**: Lead and mentor a multidisciplinary hardware team, elevating capable engineers and growing individual contributors into technical and people leads. Own team structure, roles, resourcing, and operating rhythm (planning, design reviews, retrospectives). Identify capability gaps and drive hiring to strengthen culture and technical depth.
**Hardware Development**: Apply systems engineering to define subsystem boundaries, requirements flow-down, and modular designs. Tackle the hardest technical problems in scaling light delivery to industrial bioprocessing. Oversee full development lifecycle from scoping through prototyping, verification, validation, and production transfer. Lead the transition from R&D prototypes to reliable, serviceable, manufacturable products. Drive make-vs-buy decisions and manage external partners and contract manufacturers.
**Quality & Compliance**: Define and execute the path to GMP readiness for hardware in partner manufacturing environments. Lead electrical safety and regulatory certification efforts. Establish appropriate quality practices for each development stage. Ensure designs can be built, deployed, and supported at scale.
The role is primarily on-site in Emeryville, CA, and requires comfort operating close to real-world systems, balancing speed and rigor, and thinking in systems across optical, mechanical, electrical, and biological domains.
**Requirements:**
- BS, MS, or PhD in Mechanical, Electrical, Optical, Systems, or Biomedical Engineering, or related field; equivalent experience considered
- 10+ years relevant industry experience, including 3+ years leading a multidisciplinary hardware engineering team or department as a people manager (senior manager or director level)
- Demonstrated experience taking at least one hardware product from R&D prototype through production and field deployment, with concrete examples of lessons learned
- Track record of setting multi-year technical or functional strategy and translating it into execution plans, budgets, and resourcing
- Hands-on experience bringing hardware into regulated environments: GMP, FDA design controls, or equivalent; leading products through electrical safety certification (UL, CE, or similar)
- Deep technical expertise in at least one core discipline (mechanical, electrical, or optical) with sufficient breadth to make sound architecture decisions across disciplines
- Strong track record of mentoring engineers and growing individual contributors into leads
- Experience managing external development partners, contract manufacturers, or suppliers against defined scopes and milestones
- Excellent written and verbal communication, including explaining complex technical tradeoffs to executives, partners, and non-engineers
**Nice-to-Haves:**
- Strong systems engineering judgment and track record architecting modular, scalable hardware platforms
- Familiarity with life science hardware: bioprocessing equipment, lab instrumentation, or medical devices
- Experience with optical systems, LED or laser illumination, or thermal management of high-power electronics
- Experience with pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment, including IQ/OQ/PQ qualification and GAMP-style validation
- Experience scaling deployed systems from handful of units to dozens or more
- Early-stage company experience through period of rapid team growth
- Working knowledge of firmware, embedded systems, and connected devices
