About Arcticar
Cold-chain logistics consumes more energy than datacenters and is one of the last hard problems in decarbonization — and Arcticar is here to solve it. The transport refrigeration units bolted onto today’s reefer trailers run on diesel: loud, dirty, and increasingly out of step with where regulators, fleets, and customers are headed. Arcticar’s all-electric system retrofits onto standard trailer mounts and runs from shore power, NACS, J1772, CCS1, or solar. No diesel. Lower operating costs. Cleaner air.
Arcticar is headquartered in Alameda, California, and was co-founded by Jim Castelaz (previously Founder and CEO of Motiv Power Systems), Rene Griemens (previously at Antora Energy, Mighty Buildings, Volocopter, with billions of dollars raised across the companies he’s helped build), and Cat Dela Cruz (previous experience in eMobility branding, marketing and enterprise sales). We’re hiring the founding team that will turn it into the category-defining product in trailer refrigeration. Learn more at arcticar.com.
The Role
As Head of Engineering, you’ll be a founding member of Arcticar’s leadership team and the principal voice on engineering, technical strategy, and product roadmap, and the leader accountable for getting our product from prototype to production-ready, on time and on budget, reporting to the CEO.
You’ll build and lead the team that designs, validates, and delivers a hardware product that has to be excellent on every dimension that matters: performance, weight, cost, manufacturability, serviceability, and compliance. You’ll own the supplier strategy, run the pilots, and make the calls on what we build, what we buy, and who we partner with. AI-enabled workflows are core to how we expect to operate and we want a leader who is genuinely excited about using these tools to ship better products, faster, with a smaller team than would have been possible even two years ago.
We have a strong preference for someone who is willing to work from our office near Alameda, CA, though we will consider exceptional remote candidates. Expect regular travel: customer and supplier visits, manufacturing partners, and time in the field with pilot fleets. Currently, outside engineering services are provided by Detroit-area consultants and development is presently split between Detroit and Alameda, with expansion expected to include consultants and test labs based in China.
What You’ll Own
- On-time, on-budget delivery: ship a product (hardware and software) that hits its targets on performance, weight, cost, manufacturability, and serviceability.
- System specifications: define and evolve specifications based on customer requirements; run disciplined change control through development and pilots.
- Validation and compliance: design the test program that proves the product works, and the regulatory program that lets us sell it.
- Supply chain: select partners and suppliers, negotiate terms, and build relationships that scale with us.
- Product roadmap: set technical direction, prioritize ruthlessly, balance customer pull with engineering reality, and keep the leadership team aligned.
- Documentation: technical, service, and training materials so our team, customers, and partners can actually use the product.
- Pilot execution: build the first units, get them into the hands of fleet operators, and learn fast.
- The team: hire, develop, and retain a world-class engineering organization, and orchestrate the consulting and service providers that complement them.
About You
This role is for a builder. You’ve shipped real, complex hardware products before, you’ve led the engineering teams that did it, and you’re as comfortable in a CAD review as you are in a supplier negotiation or a regulatory submission.
• 8+ years in hardware product development, including at least one tour as the senior-most engineering or product leader at a startup or growth-stage company.
• A track record of taking electromechanical or electrified products from concept through pilot into production. Background in commercial vehicles, refrigeration, HVAC, power electronics, batteries, or thermal systems is a plus.
• Have or are willing to quickly acquire a basic understanding of and familiarity with:[C1]
- Automotive approaches to quality (PPAP, APQP, etc)
- Common manufacturing processes, including molding and thermoforming, and design for manufacturing
- Design and bring-up of low- to mid-volume production lines, including incorporation of best practices for quality and testing
- Mechanical design, including static FEA
- Electronics design, assembly and test
- Wire harness basics
- High voltage (400V) battery systems
- 2-phase refrigeration systems
- DFMEA and PFMEA
- Design validation, test planning and execution, test coverage
- Embedded software development processes and toolchains, both Linux and real-time
- Full stack software development processes and toolchains
• Demonstrated ability to hire and grow strong engineering teams and to manage external partners (consultancies, contract manufacturers, certification bodies).
• Fluency with modern AI-assisted development workflows — and strong opinions about how to use them to ship better and faster than the competition.
• Comfort with the ambiguity, pace, and scrappiness of a founding-team environment. Bias to action; clear written and verbal communication; high standards for yourself and others.
A background in cold chain, refrigerated transport, or commercial fleet electrification is a bonus, not a requirement — we care more about what you’ve shipped and how you operate.
How We Work
• Ownership. People here own outcomes, not tasks. If something matters and isn’t getting done, it’s yours to fix or to escalate.
• Accountability. We say what we’ll do, by when, and we do it. When we miss, we say so early and we say so honestly.
• Teamwork. We hire teammates, not stars. The best ideas win — wherever they come from — and we want everyone arguing for the right answer, not for their answer.
• Integrity. We tell our customers, our investors, and each other the truth, even when it’s inconvenient.
• Joy. Building hardware that decarbonizes a hard-to-abate sector is genuinely fun work. We take the work seriously and ourselves less so.
Compensation & Benefits
• $180,000 USD per year base salary.
• $20,000 USD per year on-target bonus (paid quarterly), tied to product milestones such as launches, passing critical validation tests, and deployments. Milestones, success criteria, and budgets are defined quarterly with the CEO.
• Base salary and bonus target reviewed annually against market data for comparable roles at comparable companies.
• Meaningful equity position
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision benefits for employee and family.
• 401(k) plan with company match, rolling out as the company scales.
• Participation in any future Paid Time Off (PTO) plan.
How To Apply
Send a note and your resume (or LinkedIn) to careers@arcticar.com. Tell us what you’ve shipped, what you’d build differently if you could start over, and why this problem matters to you.
Arcticar is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
You must have eligibility to work in the US; we cannot currently sponsor visa applicants.
