Hardware Product Lead
Company: Kubo Care
Location: Bengaluru (on site, full time; lab and vendor facing)
Reports to: Founder/CEO
Experience: 8+ years
Company Overview
Kubo Care builds non-invasive safety and wellbeing devices that help the world’s 1 billion seniors age safely and independently at home. Our devices combine contactless sensing with on-device AI for fall detection, wellness monitoring, and environment quality tracking, far superior to existing solutions such as cameras and wearables.
We are a seed stage company having raised from investors like NEA and Antler, deployed across India, US, and Japan. We are now moving from pilot deployments to scaled production, and this role will play a critical role in making that a reality.
Why This Role Exists
We are at the point where the technology is proven and the next milestone is making it a shippable, certifiable, manufacturable product line at scale. Two things are happening at once: we are moving from in-house assembly to third-party mass production, and from a single device to a tiered multi-sensor offering for enterprise partners.
This role owns the hardware ecosystem end to end. That includes the embedded and firmware layer, and everything between the lab and the customer’s wall: production discipline, contract manufacturing, certification, and the sensor ecosystem around our radar core.
You do not need to have worked on our specific sensing technology. We care that you have taken sensor-based hardware from prototype to production.
What You Will Own
- Embedded software, firmware and hardware architecture. Take ownership of the embedded and firmware stack running on our devices, working alongside our technical advisors and hardware R&D lead. Own hardware architecture decisions across components, and the driver and hardware-software integration work with the software team.
- Device productization and production discipline. The golden image (standardised device configuration and provisioning), soak and burn-in standards, QC pass/fail criteria, DFM/DFT, and the handoff from lab assembly to repeatable production. Plan and execute OTA-ready and field-serviceable hardware revisions.
- Third-party manufacturing. Scout, qualify and manage contract manufacturers in India/China/Taiwan for scaled production. Own vendor relationships for carrier boards and assemblies, including engineering escalations with board vendors, incoming QC and assembly line bring-up.
- BOM and sourcing. Component selection trade-offs, sourcing strategy, cost-down, and landed cost for imported components.
- Certification and import compliance. Work with partners to ensure hardware meets the applicable safety, RF and environmental standards, and own the certification and import compliance workstreams (BIS, WPC, CDSCO as applicable in India; FCC and CE for export markets).
- Solution architecture for the product ecosystem. Design the commercial offering around the radar core: third-party sensors (door, gas, temperature), smart-home integrations, gateways that unify them, and camera-based solutions where radar is not the right tool. Build and maintain the tiered offering structures for enterprise partners.
- Hardware forensics when it counts. When field devices misbehave, you run the structured root-cause campaign, designing experiments, coordinating vendor engineering, and driving to a productionizable fix.
- Team. Mentor junior hardware engineers and set hardware team processes as the team scales.
Must-Have Qualifications
- 8+ years of hands-on hardware product development, concept through production, in consumer electronics, IoT, or medical and wellness devices, with at least one product taken from prototype to third-party manufacturing.
- Embedded depth: ARM-based SBCs and microcontrollers, firmware, driver-level work, and sensor integration. Technology-agnostic on background: radar or RF sensing, optical or ultrasonic sensing, environmental sensors, or comparable signal-generating sensor platforms all translate.
- Hands-on electronics literacy: can read schematics, run structured hardware root-cause experiments, and hold your own in an engineering call with a board vendor.
- Direct experience managing contract manufacturers or OEM/ODM partners in India or China.
- Comfort owning commercial-technical artefacts: solution architectures, tiered offerings, BOM cost models.
- Degree in Electronics, Electrical, Mechanical Engineering or a related field.
Strong to Have
- IoT or sensor ecosystem product experience (MQTT, gateways, smart-home integrations).
- OTA update architecture and hardware considerations for field-updatable firmware.
- Familiarity with the regulatory landscape (BIS CRS, WPC/ETA, import compliance) and with regulatory considerations for health-tech devices.
- Healthcare or senior care product exposure.
- Startup 0-to-1 experience and comfort being the only owner of a domain.
What We Offer
- Ownership of the hardware product of a company building a genuine hardware-plus-AI moat in elder care, at the moment it starts the global scaling journey.
- A seat at the core of a seed stage team backed by NEA and Antler, deploying across three countries.
- A chance to see your work deployed in millions of homes protecting people within months.
- Competitive salary and a meaningful ESOP grant.
Location and Set Up
On site, full time, Bengaluru. You will be part of a close-knit team building and deploying hardware-enabled software solutions.
How to Apply
Send a CV and a short note on a hardware product you took from prototype to production to [email protected]. Include any experience with sensor-based products, embedded firmware, certification, or contract manufacturing.