Head of Engineering

Company Description

Verustruct is developing a suite of robotic construction technologies to automate the building of affordable, sustainable, safe, and aesthetically appealing housing. The company’s mission is to help close the U.S. housing gap of 4.5 million homes by transforming how residential structures are designed and built. Verustruct focuses on integrating advanced robotics, automation, and novel construction methods into practical, scalable solutions. Team members collaborate across disciplines to bring next-generation construction systems from concept to field deployment, with a strong emphasis on real-world impact and long-term sustainability.

About the Role

Lead the engineering team turning robotic construction into a dependable way to build homes and other critical structures around the world.

Verustruct is hiring a Head of Engineering to lead technical execution across mechanical, electrical, robotics, software, materials, structural, and manufacturing engineering. Working directly with the Founder & CEO, you will translate company priorities into an integrated development program and guide our systems from full-scale prototypes toward repeatable field deployment.

You will serve as both an organizational leader and a hands-on member of technical staff. You will help resolve difficult architecture and integration problems, lead consequential design reviews, work alongside engineers during builds and tests, and develop a team capable of taking increasing technical ownership.

The central challenge is making the complete construction system work: coordinating machine motion, concrete behavior, structural requirements, utilities integration, manufacturing, and field operations within a practical cost and schedule.

This is a full-time, on-site leadership position in Torrance, California, with involvement in testing and field deployment. A strong candidate will have deep engineering experience and be able to contribute to engineering objectives on the ground while also setting long-term technical directives.

What You'll Do

• Own the integrated engineering roadmap, technical milestones, and execution plan for Verustruct’s robotic construction platform.
• Translate product and deployment goals into measurable system requirements, subsystem interfaces, engineering priorities, and verification criteria.
• Lead architecture and trade studies across disciplines, balancing performance, reliability, safety, manufacturability, cost, serviceability, and development speed.
• Establish clear technical ownership and decision-making across teams and resolve dependencies before they become integration bottlenecks.
• Remain directly involved in critical design work, technical reviews, experiments, and failure investigations.
• Build an integration and test strategy that connects component validation, subsystem testing, complete-machine operation, and construction-site performance.
• Coordinate robotics development with materials processing, structural engineering, and construction requirements so the machine and the building system develop together.
• Identify the highest-risk assumptions and organize focused analysis, prototypes, and tests to resolve them early.
• Lead engineering planning and resource allocation, communicate schedule and technical risks clearly, and make explicit tradeoffs as priorities evolve.
• Recruit, mentor, and manage engineers and technical leads; provide direct feedback and establish a high standard for technical judgment and execution.
• Develop practical standards for design reviews, configuration control, documentation, release readiness, and engineering changes.
• Partner with manufacturing, suppliers, and field teams to turn successful prototypes into equipment that can be built, operated, maintained, and improved repeatedly.

Requirements

What We're Looking For

• A record of delivering complex physical products or robotic systems from development through operational deployment.
• Significant engineering experience, typically 10+ years, including leadership of multidisciplinary teams and responsibility for integrated technical outcomes.
• Deep expertise in at least one relevant discipline and sufficient breadth to challenge assumptions and evaluate interfaces across mechanical, electrical, controls, software, and manufacturing engineering.
• Evidence of recent hands-on technical contributions: architecture decisions, design work, integration, testing, or root-cause investigations.
• Experience managing engineers, developing technical leaders, hiring strong teammates, and setting clear expectations.
• Strong systems-engineering judgment, including requirements definition, interface management, verification planning, and disciplined handling of technical risk.
• Ability to distinguish problems that need rigorous analysis from those best resolved with a fast, well-designed experiment.
• Experience making resource and schedule tradeoffs in an environment with incomplete information and evolving requirements.
• Clear communication with technical teams, company leadership, and external partners.
• A degree in engineering or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Benefits

Benefits include

• Health insurance: Silver PPO plan, 80% company-paid, with optional dental and vision coverage
• Retirement: 401(k) plan with 4% employer match
• Time off: Flexible PTO policy and observed federal holidays
• Relocation support: Available for exceptional candidates relocating to the Los Angeles / Torrance area
• High-ownership role: Opportunity to help lead mechanical engineering for a venture-backed robotics company tackling housing affordability