Director of Hardware Engineering & Manufacturing

About the role

InnerPlant is on a mission to transform farming as never before imagined: We give crops a voice by turning plants into living sensors that signal the onset of stress, enabling farmers to increase yields and reduce costs by optimizing inputs. The Director of Hardware Engineering & Manufacturing is responsible for the hardware systems that power InnerPlant's commercial product, CropVoice. The CropVoice platform translates signals from our living sensors to pinpoint stress well before visible symptoms, giving farmers and agronomists critical and timely insights and removing the guesswork behind key in-season decisions. The Director owns the hardware product lifecycle—from architecture and engineering through prototyping, validation, manufacturing, deployment, and continuous improvement—as InnerPlant turns breakthrough technology into scalable, reliable products that can operate across millions of acres. The Director of Hardware Engineering & Manufacturing will be based in Des Moines, IA, and reports to the Chief Operating Officer.

Responsibilities

• Lead hardware product design and development, including:
  • Owning the hardware engineering roadmap and system architecture for CropVoice's optical, electrical, embedded, mechanical, and data-acquisition systems;
  • Leading development from concept and rapid prototyping through design verification, validation, production, and field deployment;
  • Overseeing design of hardware that meets product and field requirements and operates reliably through heat, cold, moisture, dust, vibration, variable power conditions, long operating hours, and limited opportunities for maintenance;
  • Overseeing equipment operation to ensure the efficiency and reliability of CropVoice hardware and troubleshoot when needed;
  • Using field data and customer feedback to continuously improve product performance
• Drive efficient and scalable manufacturing processes, including:
  • Owning the transition of hardware products from engineering prototypes into repeatable and scalable manufacturing, anchored in design-for-manufacturing and design-for-assembly practices;
  • Developing and managing relationships with contract manufacturers, suppliers, and strategic technology partners, and building scalable and cost-effective supply-chain strategies for critical components and assemblies;
  • Establishing manufacturing processes, quality standards, test procedures, and production controls, and leading root-cause analysis and corrective action for manufacturing and field failures;
  • Establishing reliability and environmental testing programs and verification and validation strategies
• Build the hardware engineering team:
  • Establish engineering processes that enable rapid development without compromising product quality or reliability; and
  • Recruit, develop, mentor, and