The Brooklyn Factory Shipping 200+ Panels on Four-Week Lead Times
Podium Automation has shipped more than 200 UL 508A-certified control panels from its Brooklyn facility, and the company is now staffing nine on-site roles across operations, commercial, and engineering to double throughput again. The careers page frames the mission as rebuilding America's industrial base, language that also appears in the a16z American Dynamism portfolio categorization. The team runs lean, and every role requires on-site work at the Brooklyn factory where design software, CNC equipment, automated wiring, assembly, and UL-witnessed testing operate under one roof.
Founders Jamie Niu (Co-founder & CEO) and Jacob Buser (CTO) lead the company. The primary manufacturing facility is co-located with headquarters at 300 Meserole St, Brooklyn, NY 11206 (per the contact page); LinkedIn also lists 19 Morris Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11205 as a location.
The Roles and What They Pay
Podium Automation posts salary bands on every opening. Equity details (strike price, pool size, refresh cadence) are not public and should be asked at offer stage.
| Role | Salary Band | Type | Core Requirement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Head of Operations | $200,000 – $300,000 | Salaried | Scaled a manufacturing floor; owns site selection, facility buildout, production geography |
| Supply Chain Operations Lead | $90,000 – $110,000 | Salaried | Component lead times, vendor negotiation, BOM-change ripple effects |
| Sales Engineer | $100,000 – $130,000 | Salaried | Translates custom panel spec into quote, shepherds through procurement and integration |
| Associate Sales Engineer | $75,000 – $95,000 | Salaried | Same technical fluency, earlier career |
| Procurement Analyst | $60,000 – $90,000 | Salaried | Blanket POs, long-lead components (transformers, PLCs, safety relays) |
| Quality Technician | $60,000 – $70,000 | Salaried | First-article inspection, traceability documentation, UL-witnessed testing |
| Operation Excellence Coordinator | $60,000 – $70,000 | Salaried | Reducing lead time, managing vendor performance, owning metrics |
| Electrical Design Engineer | Not publicly posted | Salaried | Production-grade EE plus comfort in codebase that ships to shop floor |
| Assembly Technician I | $25/hour | Hourly | Reading schematics, wiring panels, running functional and compliance tests |
Salary bands are sourced from the company's own postings on Ashby, the a16z jobs portal, and Indeed. Third-party aggregators (Levels.fyi, Glassdoor, Salary.com) reflect the customer-communications platform also called Podium (headquartered in Lehi, UT) and are not reliable for Podium Automation. The Zero G Talent board ingests the company's postings directly and shows a board-wide salary band of $58k–$181k (median $93k), according to Zero G Talent's board data, across 8 salaried roles.
The cross-disciplinary shape is deliberate. The Electrical Design Engineer works on the proprietary automation that generates schematics, selects components, and feeds the fabrication line. The Quality Technician treats first-article inspection as a design review — running point-to-point continuity, verifying as-built against customer-approved drawings, and conducting full power-on test supervised by a UL Manufacturer Technical Representative. Procurement and supply chain leads source long-lead components before the schematic freezes. The Sales Engineer translates a customer's conveyor sequence into a panel spec the shop can build in weeks and flags UL deviations early.
The Hiring Process
Podium runs recruiting through Ashby. A Senior Technical Recruiter & People Partner owns full-cycle recruiting across all three functions. Candidates enter through the career page or Ashby-hosted job links.
The company's public language — "Build the machines building the machines. We're hiring engineers and operators ready to move fast and be part of something growing", signals the cadence expected. All roles are on-site in Brooklyn five days a week; visa sponsorship is not advertised. The cover letter field in Ashby is read by hiring managers for writing clarity and evidence you've researched the actual product: software-enabled design feeding automated fabrication.
The Factory Floor
The headquarters and the first automated panel factory share the same footprint in Brooklyn — a deliberate choice to prove that UL 508A-certified panels can be manufactured in New York City and shipped in weeks instead of months. As of the most recent public update, the team has doubled factory throughput quarter-over-quarter while achieving positive factory-level economics.
The floor plan reflects the design-build flow: proprietary design software handles schematic generation and pre-production validation upstream; downstream, the factory integrates CNC machining, automated wire processing, and assembly cells into a continuous line. The company describes the approach as "machine-augmented, human verified" — automation removes variability from cutting and wiring, while a UL-certified team oversees quality assurance at every stage.
Testing is built into the line. Before any panel ships, the team runs point-to-point continuity, verifies the as-built panel against customer-approved drawings, and conducts the same supervised power-on test.
The Operation Excellence Coordinator ($60,000–70,000) and the Head of Operations ($200,000–300,000, Ashby's figures put the floor at $200,000) are both based on the production floor. A Supply Chain Operations Lead ($90,000–110,000) and a Procurement Analyst ($60,000–90,000) manage the material flow that feeds the line. The recent hire of an Office and Facilities Coordinator underscores that the physical plant itself is now a managed asset requiring dedicated coordination.
Podium has stated publicly that it is building new factories in the United States to be announced soon. The Brooklyn site remains the reference implementation: a co-located HQ and factory where the same design-to-test flow operates under one roof. Candidates stepping into any role should expect to work on that floor.
Podium Automation is reimagining industrial control panel manufacturing through software-enabled design and automated fabrication. We're building technology to create a new industrial supply chain - reducing lead times for critical electrical equipment from months to days. Indeed reported that we've raised over $23M from top-tier investors including Construct Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Transition Ventures, Sunflower Capital, Banter Capital, and SV Angel.
As Head of Operations, you will own everything that happens across panel design, fabrication, and delivery. This is an executive leadership role reporting directly to the Co-Founder/CEO, responsible for building and running the operational backbone of a fast-scaling hardware company. You will oversee production across our current and future manufacturing facilities, lead our supply chain and procurement function, and drive site selection and expansion as we grow our footprint.
This role is equal parts builder and operator - you'll set strategy and get into the details. The right person has deep experience in manufacturing/production environments and thrives at the intersection of process rigor, people leadership, and scrappy problem-solving.
What You'll Own
Production & Manufacturing
Own end-to-end production operations across all current and future Podium facilities, with full accountability for output, quality, and throughput
Build and continuously improve manufacturing processes, workflows, and quality systems as we scale from early production to high-volume operations
Recruit, develop, and lead a world-class operations team including facility general managers, production supervisors, and technicians
Partner with engineering to drive DFM (design for manufacturability) and ensure a tight feedback loop between product and production
Supply Chain & Procurement
Who Lasts
The four-week panel commitment means design changes after release are expensive. Engineers who last front-load verification (DFM reviews, BOM scrub, test-point strategy) rather than iterating on the floor. The quality technician who thrives follows the same review process. The same procurement approach applies. The sales engineer who wins the repeat order translates the same spec process, identifying UL deviations early.
Public reviews on Glassdoor and Indeed reflect the SaaS company Podium (Lehi, UT), not this Brooklyn automation shop; SimplyHired shows zero ratings for Podium Automation. That absence is itself a signal: a small, project-driven controls house doesn't generate the review volume of a consumer software platform. The clearer cultural document is the project cadence — four-week builds, Fortune 500 integration via Tampa integrator Top Hat Engineering, UL 508A certification.
The Next Factory Starts With This One
The panels shipping today from Brooklyn are the proof that the software-to-fabrication loop works. Every role on the board exists to tighten that loop further — cut lead time, reduce variability, scale the geography. The next factory, wherever it lands, will be built by the people who just proved they can do it in Brooklyn.
Working in robotics? Zero G Talent tracks the openings: see every open Podium Automation role, browse robotics jobs, the companies hiring, and the people building the field.