Director of Hardware

Job Type

PetSafe Brands, formerly known as Radio Systems Corporation, is headquartered in Knoxville, TN. It has been named “The Marble City” and "Scruffy City", names we have embraced for our unique charm. We are the home of 1982 World’s Fair and we boast of 21 craft breweries around the city (click here for the Ale Trail). If you like to hike or camp, visit the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. Take your pick of outdoor activities from walking, tubing, running, or biking in our Urban Wilderness. Knox County has an amazing public-school system, no state income tax, low property taxes and cost of living. We host Music and Shakespeare on the Square as well as Family Movie Nights on the Square during the summer months in downtown Knoxville.

Our Company: PetSafe Brands is the world leader in pet products through our family of brands:Pet Safe® Brand, Sport DOG® Brand, Invisible Fence® Brand, Kurgo and Premier Pet. Pet Safe® Brand makes every product from leashes and harnesses to water fountains and and litter boxes. We have an ambitious goal of touching over 21 million pets, people, and communities around the world each year. We serve a broad range of pet owners from providing the hunter the best gear for a successful hunt to accommodating the “Not-So-Crazy Cat Lady” with all the entertaining toys and effective solutions she could ever imagine. We do this by creating a culture of enthusiasm, resilience, adaptability, and teamwork every day in the office. We work hard to be our community’s employer of choice as we all live our purpose: We exist to unleash freedom for pet parents by keeping their pets happy, healthy and safe. 

Summary of Position:

The Director, HW & Mechanical Engineering is a senior functional leader responsible for the engineering disciplines that bring PetSafe products to life in the physical world—Electronics Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Firmware (non-connected products), Mechanical Engineering, and engineering resources based in China. This role provides horizontal capability leadership across these disciplines, shaping standards, growing talent, and ensuring engineering excellence whether teams are embedded in product pillar delivery or operating in a service capacity to those pillars.

The Director leads through 2–3 engineering managers and oversees a team of approximately 20 engineers across the US and China. This role is a peer to the Director of Software Engineering and works in close partnership with Product Management, PMO, Operations, and other functional leaders to deliver integrated product outcomes across PetSafe’s connected and non-connected portfolio.

Functional Leadership & Engineering Excellence

• Own and continuously elevate engineering standards, tools, methodologies, and best practices across Electronics, Electrical, Firmware (non-connected), and Mechanical Engineering disciplines.
• Serve as the technical authority for hardware and mechanical development, setting quality, reliability, and manufacturability expectations across PetSafe’s connected and non-connected consumer product portfolio.
• Establish and enforce design-for-manufacturability (DFM), design-for-testability (DFT), and design-for-reliability (DFR) practices to reduce rework, improve first-pass yield, and accelerate time to market.
• Drive consistent use of stage-gate processes, engineering change management, and technical documentation standards across all disciplines.

Hardware Platform Strategy

• Define and maintain a hardware platform strategy informed by product roadmaps across pillars and teams, identifying opportunities to share architecture, components, and subsystems across the portfolio.
• Work with product and engineering leadership to evaluate build-vs-buy decisions, platform reuse, and technology investments that improve scalability, cost, and time to market.
• Provide long-range technical input on component roadmaps, supplier technology direction, and emerging hardware capabilities relevant to PetSafe’s product vision.
• Ensure platform decisions are documented, socialized across teams, and reflected in engineering standards and reference architectures.

People Leadership & Team Development

• Lead, coach, and develop 2–3 engineering managers and, through them, a team of ~20 engineers across US and China locations.
• Create clear career paths, development plans, and performance expectations; foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and technical pride.
• Build strong onboarding, mentorship, and succession practices; attract and retain top engineering talent across disciplines.

Product Delivery & Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner with product pillar teams to deploy engineering resources effectively, whether matrixed into pillar delivery or providing a service capacity model.
• Collaborate with Product Management, PMO, Industrial Design, Operations, and peer engineering leaders to ensure hardware and mechanical development integrates seamlessly into holistic product programs.
• Actively manage technical risk, schedule risk, and cost targets across development programs; communicate tradeoffs and status clearly to executive stakeholders.
• Partner with Operations and Sourcing on supplier and manufacturing relationships, ensuring engineering input is represented in key vendor decisions.

Innovation & AI-Enabled Engineering

• Champion the adoption of modern engineering tools, simulation capabilities, and AI-assisted workflows to improve design quality, reduce cycle time, and increase engineering throughput.
• Stay current on emerging hardware, materials, and connectivity technologies relevant to PetSafe’s product roadmap.

Required

• 10+ years of hardware or mechanical product engineering experience, with 4+ years in people leadership roles managing engineering managers or senior engineers.
• Demonstrated breadth across multiple hardware disciplines—electronics/PCB design, electrical systems, mechanical engineering, and/or firmware for non-connected embedded products.
• Proven track record delivering consumer products at scale, with strong understanding of DFM, DFT, supplier development, and manufacturing operations.
• Experience with RF-based products and/or connectivity technologies (BLE, Wi-Fi, GPS, LTE) and associated compliance, antenna design, and regulatory considerations.
• Experience managing distributed or geographically dispersed teams, including international engineering team leadership.
• Proven ability to operate in a matrixed organization, balancing functional discipline stewardship with cross-functional product delivery accountability.
• Strong communicator with the ability to present technical tradeoffs, program status, and risk to executive stakeholders.
• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field required.

Preferred

• Experience spanning both connected (IoT/smart) and non-connected consumer product development within the same organization.
• Background in pet, consumer electronics, or adjacent consumer durables industries.
• Familiarity with contract manufacturing and supplier management in China, including direct factory and engineering engagement.
• Experience with softgoods and hardgoods development (textiles, injection molding, accessories) in addition to electronics and mechanical systems.
• Advanced degree in Engineering or related field.

Relationships:

• Reports to the VP of Product Engineering

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BENEFITS:

Working for PetSafe Brands definitely has its benefits. We offer a collaborative and creative team-oriented work environment where we encourage you to take risks to learn and grow! We offer a competitive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, and 401K match. In addition we offer a rich wellness program which includes an onsite health clinic, workout facility and of course, we encourage you to bring your dog to work, which is our whole reason for what we do!

PetSafe Brands is dedicated to offering equal employment opportunity for all teammates and fostering a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. At PetSafe Brand, our teammates are our greatest strength. We strive to build a workforce as diverse as the customers we serve by hiring great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, life experiences, knowledge, self-expression and talent. We recruit and reward teammates based on capability and performance and together we are building a culture that welcomes all dimensions of an individual’s identity including race, color, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, educational background, national origin or ancestry, religion, veteran status, or physical ability. We embrace these differences and the unique contributions each teammate brings not just because it is the right thing to do but because it makes our company stronger. While we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace and a culture of belonging, we recognize that we still have more work to do and a lot more to learn.