Founding Director of Engineering

Spring Innovation Fund • San Francisco, California, United States • $230k - $260k / year • 1h ago

Founding Director of Engineering — Spring Works

Spring Innovation Fund · San Francisco Bay Area · Full-time, on-site, full benefits

Spring Innovation Fund is a venture studio building Welfare Tech companies.

The Opportunity

We’re hiring the founding engineering leader for Spring Works, a new in-house R&D space that designs, prototypes, and validates devices that improve the welfare of farmed animals. You’ll be employee #1 reporting to the CEO: you’ll hire the team, stand up the physical space in San Francisco, own every spec, and drive decisions about what we build versus contract out. The technical problems are real: power electronics in wet industrial environments, EEG-based validation, and design-for-cost in markets where a $10k device needs to do what a $100k device does elsewhere. But when each device ships, the outcome is a measurable improvement in welfare for millions of animals.

What you’ll do

Build the team. Hire and lead a team of engineers (power electronics, mechanical, embedded/firmware, welfare validation, operations technician) over your first 6–9 months.
Stand up the lab. Select and build out our SF-area prototyping and validation space.
Own the spec. Translate welfare goals into buildable engineering requirements.
Run the pipeline. Lead multi-iteration device programs from concept to validated prototype; decide what’s built in-house vs. scoped to contract firms, and manage those firms’ workflows.
Own the IP and institutional memory across programs, working with Spring’s IP counsel.
Hand off to scale. Work with our venture arm to transfer validated designs to commercial spin-offs.

What we’re looking for

Ideally 10+ years in electromechanical device R&D, with programs you personally led from ambiguous requirements to validated, working hardware.
You’ve built something organizational before — stood up a lab, founded a consultancy practice, or scaled an engineering team.
Ability to manage a team working on multiple ongoing workstreams effectively
Strong systems-level instincts across electrical, mechanical, and embedded domains.
Experience commissioning and managing external engineering firms.
You thrive in uncertain and dynamic environments, and welcome creative challenges.
You find Spring’s mission compelling.

Example backgrounds: principal or director at a product-development consultancy; R&D director in medical devices or scientific instruments; founding hardware lead at a startup that shipped physical products.