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Nominal builds software that lets hardware teams test, iterate, and deploy as fast as software teams.
The Role
Lead development of AI agent products and AI-native applications for hardware engineering workflows. Prototype ideas rapidly, build products end to end, improve agent user experiences, establish interaction patterns, and lead technical direction across product engineering. Partner with design, product, and platform teams while working closely with engineers and users.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Nominal
About Hardware Intelligence
The Role:
💼 What You'll Do:
🚀 What you'll bring:
⚡️ Nice to have:
Benefits/Perks
Our mission is to accelerate how the world engineers new hardware. Nominal's connected test and operations platform powers the world's most advanced hardware programs and its most ambitious startups, from spacecraft, racecars, and autonomous vehicles to next-generation defense and energy programs. Our customers include Anduril, Shield AI, Hermeus, Albedo, Shinkei, and Pratt Miller Motorsports, as well as U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force programs. Now we're expanding across the entire hardware lifecycle, building the foundation, AI-native applications, and agents that accelerate innovators' work and change what's possible to build.
We're backed by Sequoia, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Lightspeed, and our team comes from SpaceX, Apple, Palantir, Anduril, Applied Intuition, and other leading companies.
We're the team behind Nominal's agents, AI-native applications, and MCP, and its forward-leaning AI bets. Our mission is to unlock the bottlenecks of the hardware lifecycle with AI. Our agents reason over physical reality, from high-rate telemetry and test campaigns to designs and simulations, where real test results are the ground truth their work is checked against. We believe opinionated AI, built for the real work of hardware programs, will change how the world engineers.
We're collaborative, iterative, and high-agency, and we're human-centered and customer-focused. We build with the newest AI tools every day, and because those tools keep changing, so do we: we stay curious and keep looking for the better way. Our team spans data science and ML, distributed systems, search, and knowledge systems, and we obsess over how agents can be genuinely useful to the engineers who rely on them.
As a Staff Product Engineer, you'll take agent products from zero to one, turning new ideas into prototypes and prototypes into products engineers love, and lead the team that builds them, from the agents engineers use every day to the AI-native apps that come next.
- Prototype new agent products and interactions in days, putting working ideas in front of engineers before anything is spec'd.
- Take the best ideas from zero to one: shape the product, build it end to end, and ship it.
- Obsess over the user experience: watch engineers work, find where agents help and where they get in the way, and fix it.
- Set the patterns for agent UX across Nominal: streaming work as it happens, showing every step, citing sources, and letting engineers edit and take over.
- Turn hardware workflows (reviews, qualification, reporting) into agent-native products, not chat bolted onto old screens.
- Lead technically across product engineers, and partner closely with design, product, and the agent platform team.
- 8+ years building products end to end, with a strong front-end and full-stack core.
- A track record of taking products from zero to one, including AI or agent experiences users chose to use daily.
- Product sense and taste: you know what makes a great product great, what to build, what to leave out, and why.
- Deep empathy for users, and the habit of learning from them directly.
- A track record of setting product engineering direction across a team and raising the bar for the engineers around you.
- You build with modern AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) every day, and stay curious and open to better ways of working. The tools keep changing, and so do we.
- You've designed agent interaction patterns others adopted: streaming work, reviewable steps, human takeover.
- You've built tools for technical users who live in data: notebooks, IDEs, observability, or CAD.
- You've led product engineering at a company known for its craft.
- You've founded a company or been an early engineer at a product-led startup.
- 🏥 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance
- 🏖️ Unlimited PTO and sick leave
- 🍽️ Free lunch, snacks, and coffee
- 🚀 Professional Development Stipend
- ✈️ Annual company retreat
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.
ITAR Requirements
To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.
Skills Required
- 8+ years building products end to end with strong front-end and full-stack experience
- Experience taking products from zero to one, including AI or agent experiences used daily
- Strong product sense and judgment about product scope and quality
- Deep empathy for users and experience learning directly from users
- Experience setting product engineering direction across a team and raising engineering standards
- Daily experience building with modern AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex
- Experience designing agent interaction patterns such as streaming work, reviewable steps, and human takeover
- Experience building tools for technical, data-oriented users, such as notebooks, IDEs, observability tools, or CAD
- Experience leading product engineering at a company known for product craft
- Experience founding a company or working as an early engineer at a product-led startup
- Must meet ITAR eligibility requirements or be eligible to obtain required U.S. Department of State authorizations
Nominal Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Nominal and has not been reviewed or approved by Nominal.
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Healthcare Strength — 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision coverage is repeatedly described as covering both employees and dependents, indicating unusually strong healthcare provisioning. Additional mentions of “Platinum” coverage reinforce the sense of a high-tier plan offering.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Unlimited PTO and paid holidays/sick time are presented as part of the core package, suggesting broad time-off benefits on paper. Parental leave is also framed as fully paid in several places, reinforcing overall leave breadth.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Wellness stipends, daily gourmet lunch (and sometimes dinner), and periodic retreats are consistently highlighted as meaningful lifestyle perks. Learning/development and other small stipends further round out a perks-heavy total rewards posture.
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The Company
What We Do
Nominal builds the essential software stack that enables hardware teams to test and iterate as rapidly as software teams. Nominal empowers engineers to continuously monitor, validate, and deploy innovations, transforming how mission-critical hardware is built and operated.
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