Chief Engineer

Department: Hardware Engineering
Location: Somerville, MA, United States

A 3D printer is one of the most demanding machines you can build.

Lasers, optics, precision motion, thermals, airflow, materials handling, chemistry, sensing, controls, and software must all work at micron-scale precision across thousands of layers, with almost no tolerance for error. Making that work reliably is an extraordinary engineering problem.

That’s what we do.

At Formlabs, we’re building 3D printers that are changing the way things get made. We have the smartest minds across every engineering discipline, and the technology they’re building is deployed at more than 50,000 industry leaders worldwide, including Apple, Google, Tesla, New Balance, and NASA.

Your Impact:

Our technical leads drive the decisions that make our products great. From the system level to the details of each subsystem, you will sit at the intersection of technical challenges and high-impact product design decisions. You will be the main technical leader who drives the overall design of a shipping product.

What you’ll do:

• Partner with the Product Team to define product-level performance goals, providing the technical perspective needed to ensure targets are ambitious, achievable, and grounded in sound engineering.
• Lead architectural down-selection across all engineering domains (mechanical, optical, electrical, etc.), identify technological risk, and output a performant, robust system architecture. 
• Champion shipping a great product. Ultimately, you’ll be responsible for the product's final performance. 
• Own technical readiness for any new technologies and ensure we’re ready to incorporate them into a product. 
• Work with domain experts to define subsystem requirements and interfaces. 
• Guide team members through the technical implementation. Help them frame technical problems in terms of customer value, make design decisions through engineering rigor and objective data, and think beyond purely technical solutions. 
• Identify program risks and keep the team focused on the most important work. 

About you:

• You’ve led the technical development of a complex electro-mechanical product.
• You are familiar with a broad range of technologies, including mechanical, electrical, thermal, optical, material science, motion control, and embedded code 
• You have demonstrated success across the entire product lifecycle, from initial concept development to high-volume manufacturing
• You are comfortable with a culture of healthy debate and can defend design decisions with objective data
• You maintain high standards for engineering work and offer constructive feedback that helps teammates improve outcomes.

Bonus:

• The products you led were high volume
• The products you led achieved commercial success as well as technical success