{"id":126641,"url":"https://alion.io/job/grounded-head-of-mechanical-engineering","title":"Head of Mechanical Engineering","company":{"id":39195,"name":"Grounded","domain":"readgrounded.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/grounded","size_band":"11-50","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"D","score":44,"open_postings":14,"ghost_share":0.929,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"}},"role":"Industrial Engineering","role_family":"Industrial Engineering","seniority":"head","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Detroit, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":136000,"max_usd":268000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":668},"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"CATIA","optional":false},{"name":"Siemens NX","optional":false},{"name":"SolidWorks","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-22T20:43:08Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-06-22","last_verified_at":"2026-11-06T02:45:33Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":136,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale","company_stale"],"days_open":135},"description":"Head of Mechanical Engineering - Grounded\nDetroit, MI (in-person)\nAbout Grounded\nGrounded is a 25-person Detroit-based startup building modular electric platforms for specialty vehicles. We take cab chassis from OEMs like Ford and Harbinger and build configurable vehicle systems on top, serving mobile healthcare, RVs, command centers, food and beverage, pet care, and more. Our customers include Colgate, Nokia, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and Portland PD. We've raised ~$5M in VC funding and are shipping vehicles in market today.\nWe also build our own software: a mobile app, fleet dashboard, and onboard computer system that lets customers monitor and control vehicle systems remotely. We design, fabricate, and assemble everything in-house at our facility in Corktown.\nThe Role\nWe're hiring a Head of Mechanical Engineering to lead our team and own the most important engineering challenge at Grounded: building a truly modular vehicle platform that enables mass customization at scale.\nToday, our engineers do significant custom design work for each new customer and use case. That doesn't scale. We need to get to a system where the vehicle infrastructure (the box, the walls, the plumbing, the electrical routing, the mechanical attachment points) is universal, and customers choose from a library of modules that plug in. A salesperson should be able to configure a vehicle with a customer without an engineer touching it, unless there's a module that hasn't been designed yet. The person who leads this defines how Grounded scales from a 25-person shop to a 250-person company.\nThis is a player-coach leadership role. You'll build and lead the mechanical engineering team and set technical direction and standards, but you'll stay hands-on in CAD and on the shop floor. And you'll do it while the business is actively shipping: we have a production backlog and can't pause to go heads-down on R&D for six months, so you'll balance delivering current customer vehicles with driving toward the modular system.\nWhat you'd actually do\nLead, mentor, hire, and grow the mechanical engineering team; own how engineers ramp, develop, and do their best work\n\nSet the technical vision and standards for mechanical design across customer vehicles and the modular platform itself\n\nOwn the architecture of the modular system - standardized attachment points, interfaces, BOMs, and a module library - so vehicles can be configured without bespoke engineering on every deal\n\nBe accountable for engineering delivery against the production backlog while carving out time to iterate toward modularity\n\nStay hands-on: design complex assemblies in Siemens NX (hundreds to thousands of components per vehicle) and work daily with the technician team who build everything in-house\n\nThink at the systems level across mechanical, plumbing, and electrical integration (you won't do electrical design, but you need to understand how it all comes together)\n\nPartner with software engineers on automating the design and manufacturing workflow: parametric design, dynamic BOM generation, automated work instructions\n\nEstablish lightweight engineering processes that scale the team without adding bureaucracy, and partner with the leadership team on roadmap and resourcing\n\nWhat we're looking for\n10+ years of mechanical design/engineering experience, including leading and managing engineers (team lead, engineering manager, or principal with leadership scope)\n\nTrack record taking physical products - not just components - from concept through production, ideally in automotive, commercial vehicles, EV, or industrial equipment\n\nStrong, current, hands-on CAD ability (NX preferred, but SolidWorks, CATIA, etc. with willingness to learn NX works)\n\nDeep design-for-manufacturability expertise: welded structures, sheet metal, tubed aluminum, fastening systems. You think about how things get built, not just how they look in CAD\n\nSystems-level thinker who can hold an entire vehicle in their head - both current builds and future modularity - and define platform architecture\n\nComfortable on a shop floor, next to the technicians, watching designs get built and iterating in real time\n\nStartup or small-company experience strongly preferred. You thrive with ambiguity, move fast, and build process only where it earns its keep\n\nExperience hiring and building engineering teams\n\nNice-to-haves\nExperience architecting modular, configurable, or platform-based product lines\n\nFamiliarity with automation tools: scripting, parametric design, programmatic CAD generation\n\nExperience with composites, CNC routing, or additive manufacturing\n\nCompensation\nCompetitive base salary + meaningful equity in Grounded + comprehensive health insurance\nWhy this role is different\nThis is the rare leadership role where you'll define both the team and the system. You'll design a kitchen module on Monday and a police command center layout on Friday - and then step back and figure out how to make all of those the same configurable platform. You'll own the engineering challenge that determines how Grounded scales, you'll do it hands-on shipping real vehicles across dozens of verticals, and you'll work directly with the leadership team every day in a place where every engineer has real ownership and impact.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5279,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":10,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Health insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Publishing","Digital Media"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-06-22T20:43:08Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":5,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.181,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":135,"expected_fill_days":28,"reasons":["conf:4","stale_co","ghost","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/grounded-head-of-mechanical-engineering","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/grounded-head-of-mechanical-engineering.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-06T04:48:52Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":8287,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-07T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":39195},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=39195"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fgrounded-head-of-mechanical-engineering"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fgrounded-head-of-mechanical-engineering"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fgrounded-head-of-mechanical-engineering"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/grounded-head-of-mechanical-engineering\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fgrounded-head-of-mechanical-engineering"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":126641}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"readgrounded.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":126641},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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