VP Engineering

Company Overview

Foundational is building a network of AI-native, autonomous factories for modern contract manufacturing. We’re reshoring critical supply chains so companies can produce high‑quality products domestically, quickly, and at competitive cost.

Foundational exists to make reindustrialization practical. Our factories are autonomy-first, reconfigurable by design, and orchestrated by a unified, AI-native factory operating layer that connects design through production.

Transformative Opportunity

Recent breakthroughs in robotics and physical AI have shifted autonomous manufacturing from a theoretical promise to a deployable capability, triggering a global race to operationalize these systems at scale. The challenge is no longer whether autonomy works, but who can integrate AI-native robotics into real production environments.

The ability to manufacture advanced products domestically is now central to U.S. economic competitiveness and national security. Foundational is focused on deploying these capabilities at scale during a decisive decade for American industrial leadership.

Who We Are

Foundational was built by executive leadership from Google’s physical AI platform and America’s two largest contract manufacturers.

Manufacturing critical products requires trust. The Foundational team has deployed AI systems at multi-billion-dollar scale and delivered thousands of products across hundreds of manufacturing facilities.

Role Overview

We are hiring a VP Engineering to lead the design, integration, and deployment of Foundational’s AI-driven robotics and automation systems. This role owns the end-to-end engineering effort required to bring our manufacturing facilities online, unifying robotics, controls, perception, and software into reliable, production-ready systems.

This role requires executive technical leadership and deep hands-on engagement. You will set engineering strategy and architecture while personally driving execution during critical build, integration, and deployment phases. Working closely with manufacturing operations, product, and additional partners, you will ensure engineering systems meet real-world requirements for throughput, safety, reliability, and scalability.

Key Responsibilities

• Own engineering strategy and execution for AI-driven manufacturing systems, spanning robotics, controls, perception, automation, and software infrastructure.

• Lead integration of autonomous mobile robots, autonomous workcells, sensors, and perception systems into a unified orchestration layer capable of coordinating heterogeneous systems in production.

• Architect and deliver core orchestration services, control layers, and system interfaces required to operate complex autonomous workflows reliably at scale.

• Build, lead, and scale a high-caliber engineering organization, establishing strong technical standards, fast execution cycles, and accountability across disciplines.

• Partner closely with manufacturing operations and product leadership to translate production constraints into technical specifications that reflect real throughput, maintenance, and safety constraints.

• Drive pragmatic build-vs-buy-vs-partner decisions grounded in timeline, risk, and operational reality.

• Establish simulation, testing, and validation workflows to de-risk deployments and enable rapid, repeatable rollout of autonomous systems across future facilities.

• Remain hands-on during critical phases, including system design reviews, integration debugging, and on-floor issue resolution.

What You’ll Bring

• 10+ years of experience leading complex engineering efforts across robotics, automation, controls, and software systems, including senior leadership responsibility.

• Proven track record integrating heterogeneous autonomous systems (AMRs, workcells, sensors, perception) into production-grade environments.

• Strong systems-level judgment and experience making high-stakes architectural and execution decisions in operational settings.

• Demonstrated ability to build and lead cross-disciplinary engineering organizations while maintaining technical credibility and hands-on engagement.

• Deep understanding of manufacturing realities, including throughput, uptime, safety, maintenance, and operator workflows.

• Experience delivering zero-to-one systems on aggressive timelines, particularly in factory or industrial environments.

• Clear, direct communicator able to align engineers, operators, executives, and external partners around technical decisions.

• Bias toward execution and speed, balanced with the discipline required to build systems that scale reliably.

• Builder mindset and comfort operating in ambiguity, with ownership for outcomes rather than narrow functional boundaries.

Why Join Foundational

Foundational is built for people who want their work to matter. The ability to manufacture critical products domestically is central to U.S. economic strength and national security, and we are focused on turning that imperative into execution at scale.

We operate with a strong bias toward delivery. Progress is measured by what runs in production, what holds up under pressure, and what improves over time. Ownership, judgment, and follow-through define our culture.

Foundational brings together the most experienced leadership team in autonomous manufacturing — operators who have run the largest contract manufacturing platforms in the United States, alongside engineers who have built and deployed large-scale systems at Google. This combination positions us as the clear leader in this category, with both the credibility and capability to set the standard for autonomous production.

We reward exceptional outcomes exceptionally. Compensation and equity are structured to reflect responsibility, impact, and results, with meaningful upside for those who help build and scale the business. For those aligned with the mission and motivated by execution at scale, Foundational offers the opportunity to help define one of the most consequential industrial transformations of the next decade.