Hiring: Director, Systems and Electro-Optical Engineering Company: Protingent Location: Pleasanton, CA Job Posted Time: 2026-09-16 01:00:56 Target Skills & Keywords : Chai, Chef About the job Experience: •10+ years of engineering experience in electro-optical or sensor systems, with at least 4 year •at least 4 year Required Skills: •Position Title: •Director, Systems and Electro-Optical Engineering •Position Description: •Protingent Staffing has an exciting direct hire Director, Systems and Electro-Optical Engineering opportunity. •Job Description: •Looking for a Director of Systems and Electro-Optical Engineering to lead the group that defines how our LiDAR sensors are architected, specified, and optically realized. The role brings systems architecture, systems engineering, optical design, and laser engineering under one leader, so that the trade-offs between optical design choices and system-level performance requirements are owned in one place rather than negotiated across teams. •This is a hands-on technical leadership role. The Director owns the product architecture and requirements baseline, leads a team of senior individual contributors, and is the system-level technical authority for the sensor within Engineering. The role partners with the Chief Scientist on technology direction and with the VP of Engineering on program execution. The scope may expand over time as the organization grows. •Job Responsibilities •Systems Architecture: Own the end-to-end sensor architecture: requirements decomposition, interface definition, and system-level trade studies across optical, laser, electronic, mechanical, and software subsystems. Establish and maintain the product specification and interface baseline where it does not yet exist, and govern it where it does. •Electro-Optical Design: Lead optical design and laser engineering as an integral part of systems architecture. Own the trade-offs between beam characteristics, transmit and receive optics, laser parameters, and system performance (range, resolution, object separability, signal-to-noise, eye safety). •Sensing Strategy and Requirements: Own the system-level requirements and acceptance criteria for how the sensor scans and samples the scene, including how sensor output is consumed by downstream perception systems. Firmware and software teams implement against these requirements; this role defines them. •Team Leadership: Lead, mentor, and grow a team of senior individual contributors spanning systems architecture, systems engineering, optical design, and laser engineering. Set technical standards, calibrate performance, and build the ladder from Systems Engineer through Principal levels. •Cross-Functional Alignment: Act as the system-level interface between Hardware, Firmware, Software, Product, Quality, and Operations. Drive root-cause analysis of system-level and electro-optical failures. •Requirements Management: Establish requirements management that traces customer and product requirements to architecture and design decisions across the product lifecycle. •Technical Governance: Chair system-level design reviews and gate reviews. Ensure design decisions are documented, change-controlled, and traceable to requirements. Interested candidates, please apply directly through the job posting on company's career page or try via AI auto apply on this platform. Don't miss this opportunity to join a forward-thinking team!