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Willow is seeking a Senior Director of Engineering to lead and scale a multi-disciplinary engineering organization spanning Electrical Engineering (EE), Embedded Firmware, Cloud Infrastructure, and Mobile/Software Applications. The company develops connected healthcare products, including the Willow Wearable Breast Pump, recognized as one of TIME's 25 Best Inventions.
In this role, you will serve as the primary technical bridge connecting physical hardware to the cloud and mobile ecosystem. You will balance strategic leadership with hands-on technical execution, diving deep into system architecture, design reviews, and technical problem-solving alongside your teams.
Key Responsibilities:
Technical Leadership: Act as chief technical authority across Willow's end-to-end stack—Electrical Engineering (PCBA design, power management, sensors), Firmware (RTOS, low-power BLE), Software (iOS/Android), and Cloud (AWS/GCP, APIs, analytics). Remain actively engaged in technical execution by driving system-level architecture, leading design reviews, and troubleshooting complex technical bottlenecks. Define and enforce technical standards, code quality metrics, hardware test procedures, and secure software development lifecycles.
Team Management: Manage, recruit, and mentor a high-performing, multi-disciplinary engineering team across EE, firmware, cloud, and mobile disciplines. Build a culture of accountability, innovation, technical rigor, and cross-functional collaboration. Establish career paths, performance management, and continuous learning programs.
Vendor Orchestration: Direct and manage external development partners, offshore software agencies, specialized design houses, and hardware manufacturing partners (JDM/ODM/CM). Negotiate statements of work, manage vendor budgets, track technical deliverables, and ensure external code and hardware designs meet internal standards.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product Management, Quality Assurance, Regulatory Affairs, and Operations to translate product requirements into executable technical roadmaps. Ensure engineering practices comply with regulatory requirements (FDA medical device software controls, ISO 13485, IEC 60601, HIPAA, data privacy standards). Balance technical debt, performance, COGS, feature velocity, and product reliability.
Required Qualifications:
Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical field.
Experience: 12+ years of progressive engineering experience in connected consumer hardware, IoT, or medical devices, with at least 5+ years in engineering leadership at Director level or above.
Multi-Domain Mastery: Demonstrated technical depth across all four core domains—Electrical Engineering (mixed-signal PCB design, low-power battery management, sensor integration, BLE design, RF compliance), Firmware (Embedded C/C++, RTOS, microcontroller architectures like Nordic/STM32, low-level communication protocols), Software & Cloud (mobile application architecture for iOS/Android, cloud platforms like AWS/GCP, microservices, RESTful APIs, IoT device management), and hands-on capability to read schematics, evaluate codebases, and guide architectural decisions.
Vendor Management: Deep experience managing third-party engineering vendors, offshore development teams, and contract manufacturers through full product lifecycles from NPI through mass production.
