Founding Hardware product Lead

Wearables (Smart Ring) · Chennai · productization, manufacturing and mechanical / industrial design

Founding role · meaningful equity · Wualt

About Wualt

Wualt is building a cellular-connected personal-safety wearable, a smart ring that can get someone help in an unsafe moment. It lives on a person's hand every hour of every day, so how it is built, how it seals, how it wears, and how reliably it comes off a production line are central to the product. We are past prototype and moving toward production, and building our founding hardware team.

The role

Own the physical product and take it to production. You lead hardware: you own the form factor and the mechanical and industrial design, you drive productization and the manufacturing ramp, and you build and run the vendor relationships across China and India that turn our design into a reliable, sealed, manufacturable device at volume. Electronics and firmware are handled in-house; your centre of gravity is mechanical, industrial design, manufacturing and vendors.

What you will own

Productization and manufacturing: NPI end to end, DFM and DFA, tooling, EVT / DVT / PVT, pilot builds through to mass production, and ownership of yield, quality and cost.

Vendors and supply chain (China and India): build and manage relationships with EMS, ODM, component and tooling partners across Shenzhen and India; source, negotiate, and own quality and timelines; drive the sealed enclosure and final assembly to a working, manufacturable result.

Mechanical and industrial design: own the mechanical architecture and enclosure, the form, the colour, material and finish, and how the device wears; tolerance stack-ups; and sealing to IP67 and beyond, all in a ring-scale form factor.

Hardware leadership:



set the hardware technical direction, work closely with and grow the electronics and firmware engineer, and coordinate contract RF, antenna and certification.

Who you are

8 to 15+ years in hardware, having taken consumer hardware, ideally a wearable or small consumer-electronics product, from design through NPI to volume production.

Deep in productization, DFM / DFA and tooling, and you have shipped sealed or IP-rated products that people use every day.

Real, warm vendor and manufacturing relationships across China (Shenzhen) and India, and you are comfortable on a factory floor driving tooling, quality and timelines.

A solid mechanical and industrial design foundation (CAD, enclosure, tolerance, sealing, CMF); your technical centre of gravity is mechanical and ID rather than pure electronics.

Startup-ready: hands-on, fast, decisive, and comfortable owning ambiguity and a hard deadline.

Nice to have

Smart-ring, watch, hearable, eyewear, jewellery or other miniaturized consumer electronics; IP-rating and waterproofing (potting, over-moulding, gaskets, acoustic sealing); certification exposure (BIS, WPC, cellular type-approval)

What we offer

Founding-level ownership of the entire physical product and the hardware team, from the very first device.

Meaningful equity with milestone-based vesting, plus a cash package that is strong for this stage.

A product worn by real people that can help in a dangerous moment, and full autonomy over how it is built.

Logistics

Chennai-based, or open to relocating. You report to the founders. To apply, send a short note on a hardware product you took from design to volume production, the vendors and factories you worked with, and what you personally owned.

- Wualt is an equal-opportunity employer. We hire for capability and drive.

📌 Hardware product lead (Chennai)
🏢 Wualt
📍 Chennai