Head of Process Engineering

The Team

Process Engineering is a new function you will seed and build. The team will be small and technical - engineers who own the standards, tooling, and quality infrastructure that connect Pi's research and production operations. You'll hire and lead specialists across process quality, dispatch and scheduling systems, and inventory management.

In This Role You Will

- Standards and Templates: Define how operational instructions are written, validated, and versioned. Build the templates and frameworks that make task designs portable across sites and teams.

- Validation and QA Systems: Design the quality criteria and rubrics that determine whether a process is production-ready. Own the gate between prototype and scaled execution.

- Tooling and Dispatch: Build or procure the software tools that operations teams use daily - operator scheduling, robot-to-task dispatch, scene readiness tracking, quality monitoring, and reporting. Replace manual coordination with reliable, scalable systems.

- Inventory and Environment Management: Build the system that ensures operational environments are consistently ready across sites. Standardize setup, props, and scene management.

- Handoff Model: Own the formal mechanism for moving processes from design through to production. Define what “production-ready” means and make that bar clear and measurable.

What We Hope You’ll Bring

- 10+ years of experience translating R&D or technical processes into portable, executable standards that production teams can follow without the original designer present.

- Track record of building standards and quality systems that other teams must follow - and the EQ to influence without authority.

- Experience working alongside researchers or R&D teams without overstepping - translating their intent into executable processes.

- Systems thinking: you see the whole pipeline and design for portability, not just local optimization.

- Comfort defining standards in a fast-moving environment where the “product” changes weekly.

Bonus Points If You Have

- Experience in robotics, autonomous vehicles, or ML data operations.

- Background in NPI (new product introduction) or manufacturing engineering at Tesla, SpaceX, Apple HW, or similar.

- Experience building dispatch or scheduling systems for production environments.

- Familiarity with quality management frameworks (ISO, Six Sigma) adapted for startup/R&D contexts.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.