Founding Director of Engineering — Spring Works

San Francisco Bay Area · Full-time, on-site, full benefits

Spring Innovation Fund is a venture studio building Welfare Tech companies. 

The Opportunity

We’re hiring the founding engineering leader for Spring Works, a new in-house R&D space that designs, prototypes, and validates devices that improve the welfare of farm animals. You’ll be employee #1 reporting to the CEO: you’ll hire the team, stand up the physical space in San Francisco, own every spec, and drive decisions about what we build versus contract out.

The technical problems are real: power electronics in wet industrial environments, EEG-based validation, and design-for-cost in markets where a $10k device needs to do what a $100k device does elsewhere. But when each device ships, the outcome is a measurable improvement in welfare for millions of animals.

What you’ll do

• Build the team. Hire and lead a team of engineers (power electronics, mechanical, embedded/firmware, welfare validation, operations technician) over your first 6–9 months.
• Stand up the lab. Select and build out our SF-area prototyping and validation space.
• Own the spec. Translate welfare goals into buildable engineering requirements.
• Run the pipeline. Lead multi-iteration device programs from concept to validated prototype; decide what’s built in-house vs. scoped to contract firms, and manage those firms’ workflows.
• Own the IP and institutional memory across programs, working with Spring’s IP counsel.
• Hand off to scale. Work with our venture arm to transfer validated designs to commercial spin-offs.

What we’re looking for

• Ideally 10+ years in electromechanical device R&D, with programs you personally led from ambiguous requirements to validated, working hardware.
• You’ve built something organizational before — stood up a lab, founded a consultancy practice, or scaled an engineering team.
• Ability to manage a team working on multiple ongoing workstreams effectively
• Strong systems-level instincts across electrical, mechanical, and embedded domains.
• Experience commissioning and managing external engineering firms.
• You thrive in uncertain and dynamic environments, and welcome creative challenges.
• You find Spring’s mission compelling.

Example backgrounds: principal or director at a product-development consultancy; R&D director in medical devices or scientific instruments; founding hardware lead at a startup that shipped physical products.

Compensation & logistics

$230–260k base depending on experience, full benefits. Bay Area, on-site.