AI-for-Hardware Engineer, Frontier Tech

About Hexa

Hexa (formerly eFounders) gives entrepreneurs the best chances to build outstanding companies.

We are a pioneering, world-leading startup studio born in Europe that designs, builds and launches category-defining startups. We are today recognized as one of the best venture studios in the world, with a track record comparable to tier-1 VC funds.

We have created 60+ companies (including 3 unicorns) with a combined valuation of over $5 billion, among them Aircall, Spendesk, Front, Swan and Yousign.

Hexa is in full growth mode, with three early-stage activities: our Ventures programs Hexa Start and Hexa Sprint which help entrepreneurs go from zero to one, and a PE program, Hexa Scale, which takes majority stakes in existing startups and pushes them to new thresholds.

The hardware vertical at Hexa: Frontier Tech

Frontier Tech is Hexa’s studio focused on physical tech, led by Guerric de Crombrugghe.

We build companies that move atoms: real machines, deployed in the field, often for defense, energy, space and critical infrastructure. A few examples of what is on the bench today include containerized atmospheric water generators, expendable turbojets, and ship-borne satellite ground stations.

Our edge is velocity. We go from idea to working hardware with small teams and lean budgets, against legacy players with hundreds of engineers and decade-long programs. AI is now the biggest lever we have to widen that gap, today by speeding up how we build, and tomorrow by shaping what kind of companies we build.

Why this role, why now

AI for hardware is moving faster than any team can track. Our internal map now tracks close to 200 tools, from text-to-CAD, AI-native electronics and physics surrogates to manufacturing, test data, procurement and the MCP connectors that let agents drive CAD and EDA tools directly.

Most of these tools will not matter. A handful will cut weeks off our programs. We need someone whose job is to find those, prove them on our real parts, and put them in the hands of our founders before our competitors do.

The mission

We’re looking for an industrial hardware engineer who is 100% AI-pilled, with a dual objective:

• Adopt AI inside our startups. Make every Frontier Tech venture the fastest-moving hardware team in its category, using the best AI tools available today.
• Build companies that grow with AI. Design products and business models that are both AI-enabled (they get better with every new generation of models) and AI-enablers (they feed AI with the data, compute, energy or infrastructure it needs), and run the companies themselves on AI from day one. The goal is a positive feedback loop: the more AI grows, the more our companies grow.

Adoption is the immediate focus. The role splits into two:

80%: deploy AI inside our ventures

Hands-on, embedded in the teams, measured by weeks saved.

• Map the bottlenecks. Sit with each venture and map its engineering workflow, from requirements to design, simulation, electronics, firmware, test, manufacturing and documentation. Find the steps that cost the most weeks.
• Do the engineering. You are part of the team, not an advisor. You will run the CAD, set up the simulations, push the PCB, write the firmware agent, build the digital twin, produce the documentation, build the tools that automate technical pre-sales material that wins a contract. You ship parts and files, not slides.
• Run the shared AI infrastructure. Set up and maintain the agents, repos and connectors between tools (CAD, EDA, simulation, data), with a common setup across ventures, so founders spend their time engineering rather than configuring.
• Make it stick. Start with hands-on workshops on each team’s real problems, then train founders and engineers, write the playbooks, and track real adoption so tools are used every day rather than demoed once.

20%: studio radar and partnerships

• Keep the map alive. Track the AI-for-hardware landscape and what frontier labs ship, and maintain our living map of tools, maturity and pricing.
• See beyond the hype. Our founders want evidence, not promises. Benchmark tools on our own parts and problems, not on vendor demos, and tell the studio plainly where the value is and where it is not.
• Close partnerships. Negotiate studio-wide deals with key players (early access, design-partner status, credits, preferential pricing) so every Hexa hardware venture starts with better conditions than it could get alone.
• Build the default stack. Turn what works into a reusable AI toolkit that every new Frontier Tech venture gets on day one.
• Design AI-native companies. Work with founders from day one on where AI sits in the product, how the business model captures value as models improve, which data to capture and own, and which workflows run on agents so the team scales without headcount growing in step with revenue.

Who we’re looking for

• An industrial hardware engineer. 3 to 7 years designing, building and testing physical products in aerospace, defense, energy, automotive, industrial equipment or a hardware startup. You have taken parts from CAD to the shop floor and know tolerancing, DFM, test campaigns and suppliers.
• 100% AI-pilled. You use AI agents every day, you have built your own automations, and you have already tried text-to-CAD, AI simulation or AI electronics tools on real work. You switch setups as soon as something better ships, and you have opinions on how a hardware company should be built when much of its engineering is done by agents.
• A skeptical builder. You judge tools by measured time saved, not by launch videos. You are as happy killing a tool as adopting one.
• High agency and fast. You figure it out and ship without waiting to be told how. You are comfortable jumping between projects in the same week.
• Commercial sense and pedagogy. Comfortable in front of founders, engineers and vendors, able to run a workshop that turns skeptics into users, and to negotiate a partnership that actually benefits our ventures.
• Languages and location. Working in English, based in Paris or Brussels, with regular days physically with the founding teams.

Recruitment process

• First call with Laure, Talent Partner at Hexa
• Interview with Guerric: mutual introduction, deep dive into the role and how we work.
• Case study: a real engineering problem from one of our ventures with Tanguy, Hexa's CTO. Propose an AI-augmented workflow and run it as a short hands-on workshop with the founders, with at least one tool working live
• Cultural fit interview with Matthieu (CEO)
• Coffee with team members & Reference checks