Hardware Tech Lead

CNTXT (AI71) | Abu Dhabi, on-site | Full-time | Reports to: Director of AI & Engineering

Role summary

CNTXT (AI71) builds egocentric and teleoperation data infrastructure for humanoid robotics and embodied AI.

This role owns our hardware end to end. You will spec our egocentric capture suite, select and manage vendors, and design hardware hands-on. You will also build CNTXT's own hardware IP. This is a hands-on tech lead role: you set the technical direction for hardware and guide the engineers and contractors working on it.

Key responsibilities

Ego capture suite: specification and architecture

• Write system requirements and the full spec for our wearable egocentric capture platform: head-mounted cameras, IMUs, EMG/biosignal sensors, hand and head-pose tracking, audio, storage, power and thermals.
• Set camera requirements: FOV, resolution, frame rate, shutter type, lens distortion and low-light performance.
• Design multi-sensor time synchronisation (hardware triggering, shared clocks, timestamping) so streams align at capture, not in post-processing.
• Trade off data quality against wearability, battery life, unit cost and manufacturability for a large, distributed contributor base.
• Define the interface to our data pipeline so device output maps cleanly into capture formats such as MCAP.

Vendor evaluation and management

• Map the market for capture devices, sensor modules, ODMs and contract manufacturers.
• Build scored evaluation frameworks and run bake-offs on real captured data, not datasheets.
• Recommend build, buy or partner decisions with clear technical and commercial reasoning.
• Run vendors through pilot, NRE, EVT/DVT/PVT and volume supply; hold them to spec, quality and delivery dates.

Hands-on hardware design

• Own or closely review schematics and PCB layouts for prototypes and custom boards.
• Write and debug embedded firmware for sensor capture, sync and data offload.
• Bring up boards and characterise performance: latency, clock drift, noise, sync accuracy, power draw.
• Build test fixtures, calibration rigs and incoming-QA tools for devices in the field.

Hardware IP

• Spot patentable ideas in sensing, synchronisation, calibration and wearable form factor.

Technical leadership

• Set up the hardware lab, tools, BOM management, design reviews and hardware version control.
• Lead design reviews, break down work and mentor engineers and contractors on hardware tasks.
• Help interview and onboard hardware engineers as the work grows.

Technical skills required

“Must” means we won't hire without it; “Strong” means we expect solid working depth.

Mixed-signal schematic design, component selection, power trees, signal integrity for high-speed links

PCB — Must

Owning or rigorously reviewing multi-layer layouts; DFM/DFT awareness; working with fab and assembly houses

Inertial and pose sensing — Must

IMU selection and integration, sensor fusion basics, intrinsic and extrinsic calibration, drift characterisation

Hardware triggering, PTP/shared clocks, timestamping at source, measuring and bounding cross-sensor offset

Embedded firmware — Must

C/C++ on MCUs and SoCs; RTOS or embedded Linux; drivers for I2C, SPI, UART, USB; DMA and buffering

Low-power and wearable design — Must

Battery selection and management, power budgeting, thermal limits for head-worn devices

Lab and debug — Must

Oscilloscopes, logic analysers, power analysers; systematic board bring-up and root‑cause debugging

Wireless and data offload — Strong

Wi-Fi/BLE integration, high-throughput local storage, reliable offload of large video datasets

EMG or similar analog front ends: filtering, noise, electrode interfaces, sampling

Mechanical collaboration — Strong

Reading CAD, enclosure trade-offs, ergonomics for all-day wear, working with ID/ME partners

Certification — Strong

CE, FCC, RoHS, battery transport rules, UAE TDRA type approval

Scripting — Strong

Python for test automation, data validation and sensor characterisation

Tools — Strong

Altium or KiCad; version control for hardware; a PLM or BOM tool

Experience and leadership

• 7+ years in hardware engineering, with at least one device taken from concept through mass production.
• Direct experience managing ODMs or contract manufacturers, including in China or Southeast Asia: NRE negotiation, factory audits, yield issues.
• A record of writing product requirement documents and hardware specs that others built against.
• Has run structured vendor or component selections and can defend the choice wit