Founding Hardware Design Engineer (Stealth AI/Hardware Startup) (San Francisco)

Founding Hardware Design Engineer (Stealth AI/Hardware Startup)

Early-stage AI + hardware startup building reinforcement-learning environments that train frontier models to master real-world engineering workflows starting with end-to-end chip design.

About the Company: We are building highfidelity simulation environments that enable leading AI models to learn complex ASIC and SoC design from scratch, giving agents the realworld training data that has long been missing from hardware engineering. Our current customers are the worlds top AI research labs. In the long term, we plan to expand the platform to aerospace, mechanical systems, robotics, manufacturing, and other highIP engineering domains.

Base Pay Range: $180,000.00/yr $250,000.00/yr

The Role:

• Founding Hardware Design Engineer literally the first hardware hire.
• Fully inperson (5 days/week) in San Francisco, CA.
• Salary: $180k $250k + meaningful equity package.

What Youll Do:

• Individually contribute to building the initial library of RLready hardware design environments.
• Partner directly with the worlds leading AI labs to capture their real chipdesign workflows and turn them into trainable simulations.
• Define the technical roadmap and engineering culture from day one.
• Naturally grow into a senior leadership position (Director/VPlevel) as the platform expands across engineering domains.

Who You Are / MustHave:

• Handson, fronttoback ASIC or SoC design experience (RTL in Verilog/SystemVerilog, synthesis, placeandroute, timing closure, etc.)
• Proven ownership mindset and excellent communication
• Any exposure to ML, reinforcement learning, or AIgenerated code

This is a rare opportunity to be the bridge between cuttingedge hardware engineering and frontier AI at the earliest possible stage, with massive technical influence and equity upside in a tiny, wellfunded team.

Seniority Level: MidSenior level

Employment Type: Fulltime

Job Function: Engineering, Design, and Information Technology

Industries: Computer Hardware Manufacturing, Robotics Engineering, Technology, Information and Media

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