Senior Hardware Engineer - Smart Cameras (Electrical Engineering and Technical Program Management experience) - Cisco Meraki
San Francisco, CA
About the Job
Application window is expected to close on 1/29/2025
Hybrid, SF, CA role
We are seeking an electrical engineering technical leader with experience in camera development to help build the future Meraki Vision (MV) hardware.
Our Hardware Engineers lead multiple products and control every aspect of hardware creation. They are the principal architects of our hardware products and will touch each part of a program by guiding decisions in industrial design, sourcing, test development, packaging, detailed design, and much more. From green light to sustaining hand-off, the Hardware Engineer’s sphere of influence and responsibility touches nearly all aspects of development.
Join our high-impact team and work with every part of the machine that brings the Meraki Magic to market!
You Will
- Develop architecture, author user documentation, and lead engineering partner teams for our new Smart Camera portfolio.
- Validate and iterate on layout and schematics. Own technical reviews and approvals.
- Develop test plans, acceptance criteria, and quality processes.
- Drive innovation across the MV portfolio, including but not limited to: System/Board Design, Circuit Board Layout, Hardware Automation, Validation and Test, Signal Integrity and Power Design.
- Build and supervise product schedule through NPI, coordinating with ME, sourcing, packaging, certification, and quality teams. Provide technical guidance as needed.
- Lead our JDM partner’s engineering and PM teams.
- Interface and collaborate with firmware resources.
- Work with product management, supply chain, and marketing to coordinate launch plans.
- Collaborate with quality and sourcing through sustaining production. Lead FA as required.
Example Projects
- A power test reveals poor efficiency in a DCDC converter used for a primary voltage rail. The Hardware Engineer works with the Meraki sourcing team to meet the power device vendor and finds that a newer, cheaper, and more efficient part is about to be released. The Hardware Engineer kicks off design updates while the sourcing team member arranges enough sample parts for the next build. During new design testing, efficiency is improved and additional thermal headroom is gained.
- The sourcing team has collected roadmap and technology updates from several lens and sensor partners. The Hardware Engineer weighs performance, features, cost, and compatibility of the upcoming parts and builds a menu of potential configurations for the next generation of Meraki MV Smart Cameras. After selecting primary candidates, the Hardware Engineer works with the JDM partner to build a proof-of-concept device and begins early concept qualification. After achieving high confidence in product viability, the program is green lit and the NPI process begins.
- Mockups for a new camera model are showing IR light reflecting off a cosmetic design feature back into the lens and causing degraded image quality. The Hardware Engineer meets with the ID team to define which cosmetic aspects are most important and sketches out a few ideas to address the issue. Together, the group brainstorms a few variations on the idea to try. Mockups are built and tested to find successful elimination of the IR reflection, and the new design is updated for the next NPI build.
You Have
- End-to-end development on products of reasonable complexity - the more, the better!
- Technical EE responsibility and ownership for system level design.
- Technical program management experience
- Designed and developed camera technologies.
- Ability to collaborate with CAD, BSP, Power, Mechanical, Signal integrity, and Manufacturing teams.
- BS and/or MS or equivalent experience in Electrical Engineering, a related field, or equivalent.
- Experience working with Asia-based partners.
- Able to travel up to 20% to Taiwan and China.
- Familiarity with the JDM and/or CM working model.
- Cultural competence and understanding of Taiwanese and Chinese cultures.
Highly Desired
- Extensive experience building hardware products that include camera technologies.
- Deep understanding of CMOS image sensor operation and system design.
- Knowledgeable with optics, have participated in lens selection and qualification.
- Experience with sophisticated camera production methodologies such as active alignment.
- Have worked with embedded IoT or Mobile SoCs with dedicated ISP blocks.
- Experience with computer vision and AI co-processors.
- Have worked alongside image quality teams and participated in video image tuning qualification.
Does this sound like you? We’d love to hear from you.
We encourage you to drop us a line even if you don’t have all the points above. That’s a lot of different areas of responsibility. We will help you pick them up because we believe that great leaders come from a diverse set of backgrounds.
About Cisco
The Internet of Everything is a phenomenon driving new opportunities for Cisco and it's transforming our customers' businesses worldwide. We are pioneers and have been since the early days of connectivity. Today, we are building teams that are expanding our technology solutions in the mobile, cloud, security, IT, and big data spaces, including software and consulting services. As Cisco delivers the network that powers the Internet, we are connecting the unconnected. Imagine creating unprecedented disruption. Collaborate with like-minded innovators in a fun and flexible culture that has earned Cisco global recognition as a Great Place To Work. With roughly 10 billion connected things in the world now and over 50 billion estimated in the future, your career has exponential possibilities at Cisco.
At Cisco Meraki, we’re challenging the status quo with the power of diversity, inclusion, and collaboration. When we connect different perspectives, we can imagine new possibilities, inspire innovation, and release the full potential of our people. We’re building an employee experience that includes appreciation, belonging, growth, and purpose for everyone.
Cisco is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis. Cisco will consider for employment, on a case by case basis, qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
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