Electrical Engineering Team Lead

Waabi builds generative AI for the physical world, starting with autonomous trucks. The hardware behind that intelligence has to be as rigorous as the software — road-ready, manufacturable at scale, and trusted by the OEMs whose trucks it lives in.

As our Electrical Engineering Team Lead, you'll own that bridge. You'll guide the team that designs Waabi's custom electronics and carries them from prototype to production, making sure every design is built for the assembly line and meets the exacting standards of our OEM partners and our own safety and functional requirements.

This position is open to candidates in both San Francisco & Pittsburgh with the expectations of 4 days onsite.

You Will…

• Lead the team. Guide and mentor a group of electrical engineers working on high-performance embedded compute and robust power distribution. Set technical direction and help people do the best work of their careers.

• Design for scale. Drive Design for Manufacturability (DFM) and Design for Testability (DFT) across every hardware iteration, moving from prototype toward zero-defect mass production.

• Own the CM relationship. Serve as the primary technical interface with our contract manufacturers — running NPI (New Product Introduction) cycles, conducting line audits, and clearing production bottlenecks.

• Partner with our OEMs. Be the technical face of Waabi to our OEM partners, translating their supplier requirements into engineering specifications and making sure our hardware integrates cleanly into their vehicle platforms.

• Uphold functional safety and quality. Ensure electrical systems meet automotive standards such as ISO 26262 and AEC-Q100, and maintain a roadmap for long-term reliability in the field.

Qualifications

• BS/MS in Electrical Engineering or a related field, or equivalent hands-on experience.

• 10+ years in hardware development, including time leading or mentoring engineers. (Formal management experience is a plus, not a prerequisite — we care that you can grow a team.)

• Deep experience with complex PCB design, high-speed signaling, and the thermal challenges of AV compute platforms.

• A strong grasp of power distribution and DC-DC conversion for high-performance compute and sensor loads, plus a clear understanding of how that hardware interfaces with the vehicle's power architecture.

• Fluency with the automotive production world — you know PPAP, APQP, and what automotive-grade reliability actually demands.

Nice-to-haves

• Direct experience owning a CM or OEM technical relationship through an NPI cycle.

• Hands-on functional-safety work under ISO 26262.

• Comfort moving between the lab bench and the high-level roadmap — happy to debug hardware yourself, and able to step back and set direction.