Applied Intuition, Inc. is powering the future of physical AI. Founded in 2017 and now valued at $15 billion, the Silicon Valley company is creating the digital infrastructure needed to bring intelligence to every moving machine on the planet. Applied Intuition services the automotive, defense, trucking, construction, mining and agriculture industries in three core areas: tools and infrastructure, operating systems, and autonomy. Eighteen of the top 20 global automakers, as well as the United States military and its allies, trust the company’s solutions to deliver physical intelligence. Applied Intuition is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with offices in Washington, D.C.; San Diego; Ft. Walton Beach, Florida; Ann Arbor, Michigan; London; Stuttgart; Munich; Stockholm; Bangalore; Seoul; and Tokyo. Learn more at applied.co.

We are an in-office company, and our expectation is that full-time employees primarily work from their Applied Intuition office 5 days a week. However, we also recognize the importance of flexibility and trust our employees to manage their schedules responsibly. This may include occasional remote work, starting the day with morning meetings from home before heading to the office, or leaving earlier when needed to accommodate family commitments. This in-office expectation does not apply to contractor positions

ABOUT THE ROLE

As Hardware Systems Lead for our drone program, you will be the hands-on chief engineer for the hardware that carries our autonomy into the air. You will understand the full system, mechanical and electrical, and own the question that matters most in flight: will it survive, and will it keep working when the aircraft is hundreds of feet up? You will architect, build, test, and break hardware, then use what you learn to make it lighter, tougher, and more reliable. Your decisions will define how Applied's hardware performs in flight, in wind, vibration, shock, temperature swings, and moisture, and you will work closely with autonomy, software, and flight test teams to get aircraft flying.

At Applied Intuition, you will

Own the end-to-end hardware architecture, mechanical and electrical, for Applied Intuition’s drone platforms

Be hands-on: prototype, build, integrate, debug, and test hardware on real aircraft, not just review designs

Define and drive survivability: determine how sensors, compute, avionics, harnesses, connectors, and enclosures will hold up to vibration, shock, hard landings, thermal extremes, dust, water ingress, and EMI

Lead integration of sensors (cameras, lidar, radar, GNSS/IMU), compute, power systems, communications, and flight controllers onto airframes

Own size, weight, and power (SWaP) tradeoffs, balancing performance, flight time, payload capacity, and cost

Define hardware requirements and reference architectures that scale across aircraft configurations

Plan and run environmental, durability, and flight testing, analyze failures and crashes, and drive root cause and design fixes

Be the technical authority and escalation point for hardware tradeoffs across mechanical, electrical, avionics, software, autonomy, and flight test

Lead hardware design reviews, set engineering standards, and mentor other engineers

Support flight test campaigns, demonstrations, and field operations

We’re looking for someone who

BS/MS in Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical, Mechatronics, or a related field

10+ years of hands-on hardware engineering experience on drones, UAS, or other aircraft

Strong command of the whole hardware system: airframe and structures, electrical architecture, power distribution, harness design, avionics, and how they interact

A track record of designing hardware to survive demanding environments, with real experience in vibration, shock, ingress protection, thermal management, and EMI/EMC

Hands-on experience in the lab and in the field: building prototypes, wiring and debugging systems, running flight tests, and diagnosing failures and crashes

Experience integrating sensors such as cameras, lidar, radar, and GNSS/IMU, along with compute and flight control hardware, onto airborne platforms