Lead Reliability Engineer

San Francisco, CA

About the role

About the Company

We're a small team solving one of the hardest problems in human-computer interaction: a noninvasive wearable that turns thought into text, no surgery required.

By pairing ultra-high-density neural sensing with our Brain Foundation Model, we decode neural signals with a fidelity once reserved for implants. Our mission is to give a billion people a direct link between mind and machine - expanding how humans think, communicate, and create.

We are building a next-generation AI companion wearable powered by EEG/BCI technology. Our device reads and responds to neural signals in real time, creating a deeply personal experience that adapts to each user. This is not another productivity tool or a gadget — it is a new category of technology built around human potential.

We are backed by strong investors, moving fast, and assembling a world-class team to bring this to market. If you thrive at the frontier of what’s possible and want to build something that genuinely changes how people interact with their own minds, we want to talk to you.

About the Role

You will be the founding reliability engineering hire, owning whether our product survives in the field. Our wearable goes onto people's heads for hours a day. It charges over USB-C, lives in pockets and bags, gets sweated on, dropped, and travels through every climate. Your job is to make sure it works, keeps working, and meets every safety, regulatory, and quality bar that consumer electronics require.

You will report to the Head of Hardware, with regular exposure to the CEO and CTO, and partner closely with the EE, FW, audio, camera, and product design leads. Each owns their subsystem; you own the qualification, certification, and field-quality strategy across all of them. You will also work extensively with external engineering teams at our contract manufacturers, test labs, and certification bodies. The work is outsourced; the accountability is yours


What You’ll Do

  • Own the reliability strategy end-to-end: test plans, qualification protocols, accelerated life testing, and certifications across all subsystems and regions.

  • Drive design-for-reliability into every team's process: leading FMEA reviews, design-review participation, and the cultural work of building reliability in rather than testing it after.

  • Define and execute the qualification test program: environmental, mechanical, wireless, battery, and biocompatibility for skin-contact components.

  • Stand up our test capability, internal where it makes sense and external lab partnerships where it doesn't, and own the test fixtures, sample plans, and pass/fail criteria that gate every release.

  • Lead the certifications strategy and execution: FCC, CE/RED, IC, RoHS, REACH, plus body-worn and battery-specific approvals, alongside our regulatory consultants and CMs.

  • Partner with the EE lead on EMC and ESD; with audio and camera leads on component-level reliability; with the product design lead on drop, ingress, and thermal robustness; with the firmware lead on field telemetry and diagnostics.

  • Take the product through qualification gates to in-market launch by end of year.

  • Own field quality post-launch: AFR/MTBF targets, returns analysis, root-cause investigation, and the corrective-action loop into design.

  • Build and lead the reliability function as the product scales.

What We’re Looking For


Must-Haves

  • 10+ years of reliability engineering for consumer hardware, with at least one shipped product where you owned reliability from concept through field.

  • Deep working knowledge of consumer-electronics qualification standards (IEC 60068, IEC 61000, JEDEC, IPC) and the regional certifications landscape (FCC Part 15, CE/RED, IC RSS, plus battery and body-worn specifics).

  • Experience designing accelerated life tests and applying statistical reliability methods (Weibull analysis, acceleration models, sample-size design).

  • Demonstrated experience driving design-for-reliability with EE, ME, and FW leads: FMEA leadership, design reviews, and embedding reliability discipline upstream.

  • Comfortable owning external lab relationships, certification projects, and CM-side reliability gates.

Nice-to-Haves

  • Wearables, hearables, mobile devices, or other body-worn consumer electronics.

  • Battery reliability: UN38.3, cycle life, swelling, thermal abuse, charging-system safety.

  • Biocompatibility and skin-contact testing (ISO 10993 family).

  • Field telemetry and post-launch quality analytics. • HALT/HASS test design and execution.

If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet every qualification, please apply. As we build, we’re hiring for complementary strengths to form a high-impact team.

Compensation & Benefits

  • Competitive base salary

  • Meaningful equity package

  • 401(k) with company matching

  • Health insurance

  • Flexible PTO

Our Hiring Timeline

  • Evaluation completed within 14 days of first interview

  • Offer letter dispatched same day as go decision, valid for 10 days

  • Start date within 4 weeks of offer acceptance

  • All candidate queries responded to within 3 hours during business hours

Sabi is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome people of all backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

About Sabi Inc.

Sabi is building the world's first non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) for consumers — a wearable in a beanie form factor that can read neural signals through your hair using breakthrough non-contact EEG technology. No surgery, no gel electrodes, no dry contacts touching your scalp. Just put on a hat and take it off.

Sabi represents a fundamentally new computing paradigm: if you can think it, you can make it happen. The company's mission is to give a billion people a direct link between mind and machine — expanding how humans think, communicate, and create. By pairing ultra-high-density neural sensing with a proprietary Brain Foundation Model, Sabi decodes neural signals with a fidelity once reserved for surgical implants.

Culture & Values:

  • Flat organization: Everyone is a "Member of Technical Staff" regardless of seniority — from new graduates to former Google/Amazon leaders. No hierarchies that limit zones of influence.
  • Mission-driven: Singular focus on bringing this technology to market, backed by multiple tier-one VCs with substantial runway.
  • Builder mentality: Leaders are expected to be hands-on, jump into the weeds, and build from scratch. No pure managers.
  • Speed: The company grew from 50 to 90+ people in weeks, with a first product targeting market by early 2025 and a multi-generational roadmap on 8-month cadences.
  • Top-of-market compensation: Liberal compensation policy designed so team members can focus entirely on the mission without worrying about everyday life.

Sabi is not making a better phone or a slightly improved gadget — it's creating something that doesn't exist in the world, with implications spanning consumer technology, accessibility, brain science, and medicine.

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Job details

Salary

$300,000 - $400,000

Location

San Francisco, CA

Company

NameSabi Inc.
IndustryBathroom Renovation
Team Size1

Funding

Total raised

$66M

Last stage

Series B

Investors

CRE Venture Capital
Janngo Capital
CCommerzVentures
NNorrsken22
Proof VC

Founders

AA

Anu Adedoyin Adasolum

Co-Founder & CEO

LinkedIn
AA

Ademola Adesina

Co-Founder & President

LinkedIn

What happens next.

No applications, no recruiter spam. Just the intro.

01

Confirm the fit

A few questions to make sure this role is the right shape for you. Two minutes.

02

I pitch you to the company

I write the intro, send it to the founder, and handle the back-and-forth.

03

A meeting lands on your calendar

If they’re a yes, I book the chat. You show up — that’s the whole job-hunt.