Founding Hardware Engineer - Autonomous Construction Vehicles

Crewline AI is building autonomous construction vehicles - starting with drum rollers and expanding into dozers, dump trucks, and excavators. Our plug-and-play kit retrofits machines in ~30 minutes, tying directly into vehicle control and layering a full perception stack (stereo cameras, LiDAR, RTK GNSS, IMU), powered by a Starlink tele-op network. Remote today, autonomous tomorrow.

In <3 months, we went from prototype to live site deployment, generating $220K ARR and a $50M+ pilot pipeline. We just raised $5.5M from Initialized (seed in 27 unicorns), Nebular, Ford Street, Cocoa, Begin, and 20+ founder-angels. Led by second-time founders Freddie ($30M ARR construction startup, Oxford CS) and Mo (ex-Amazon ML, founding eng @ y42, $50M raised).

As a Founding Hardware Engineer, you will have end-to-end ownership of the core hardware system enabling remote control and autonomy on 50T heavy machines, working across electrical, mechanical, and embedded domains.

• Design and develop teleoperation hardware systems, including power, compute, and control modules
• Integrate and calibrate sensors (cameras, LiDAR, radar, GNSS, IMU) via GMSL, Ethernet, CAN
• Create wiring harnesses and mounting systems for sensors, actuators, and control electronics
• Implement and validate communication protocols (CAN, LIN, J1939, Ethernet, Serial)
• Work with manufacturers and suppliers on DFM, reliability testing, and production ramp
• Support system bring-up and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing
• Produce schematics, harness drawings, CAD models, and assembly guides

• 2-10 years hands-on experience in hardware, mechatronics, robotics, automotive or heavy machinery (not management)
• Proven 0→1 ownership of physical systems from concept to field deployment
• In-person in SF and willing to spend ~50% of time travelling around US with founders to live construction sites
• Strong electrical fundamentals: power, schematics, harnesses, EMI/EMC
• Experience integrating vehicle sensors (cameras, LiDAR, GNSS, IMU)
• Mechanical integration experience (mounts, enclosures, vibration, ingress)
• Comfortable with system bring-up, HIL testing, and field debugging
• Experience taking prototypes to low-volume production (DFM)
• High-ownership, fast-iteration, field-first mindset