Hardware Product Engineer (Intermediate)

Founded and based in Richmond, BC, Ideon Technologies uses the energy from supernova explosions in space to image deep beneath the Earth’s surface. The world pioneer in cosmic-ray muon tomography, Ideon has developed the REVEAL™ Subsurface Intelligence Platform™, comprising an advanced suite of proprietary data-generation hardware, software, AI-powered services, and multi-physics fusion that provide x-ray-like visibility deep underground and unlock the exponential power of integrated spatial data.

By transforming muon data into reliable 3D density maps, Ideon helps geologists identify, map, characterize, and monitor mineral deposits with confidence. This reduces risk and cost of traditional methods, while saving time, optimizing return, and minimizing environmental impact across the mining value chain. In turn, this is helping accelerate the world’s transition to low-impact mining and transform how companies recover the critical minerals required to power the global shift to clean energy – improving peoples’ lives and enhancing economic prosperity.

We are a dynamic tech scale-up of nearly 70 employees (and growing!). We are a team that is entrepreneurial by nature and focused on doing things right to deliver great customer outcomes. And we are committed to seeking out the best brains and the most exceptional humans, wherever they come from and however they happen to be packaged.

The Role

We are seeking an Hardware Product Engineer (Intermediate) who will sustain and scale our in-production hardware. This spans failure mode analysis, continuous improvement of yield, and supporting our factories in scaling production to meet demand. Managing supply chain risk, identifying part substitutes, updating drawings and approving engineering change orders and deviations. We seek someone skilled in product lifecycle management to ensure we have a complete source of truth in our design files and have an effective interface to our factories across build packs, schematics, drawings and ABIs. This role is essential in ensuring continuity of supply as well as being prepared to scale our supply chain and factory floor to meet rapidly growing demand.

The role requires skill in understanding electrical schematics, printed circuit board layouts and mechanical drawings, and recognizing critical parameters of each, such as tolerances, GD&T callouts and assembly drawings. Understanding the manufacturability of various components is essential to project yield and develop effective controls. The Hardware Product Engineer should be familiar with converting individual parts into high level assemblies (HLA), advancing build instructions and anticipating the improvements required to scale manufacturing. They will be able to advocate for the minimum effective set of inspections and tests and recognize when to scale vertically and when to scale horizontally in labour and equipment.

Tracking failure modes of deployed systems is a critical part of the role to capture improvements for future designs and to attribute them back to factory. Minimizing the risk of latent failure by detailed investigations of root cause is required for electrical and mechanical factors such as electrostatic discharge and shock but also workmanship and assembly failures.

You will report to the Director, Hardware Engineering and work in a team setting across hardware, firmware, systems, manufacturing, and field operations. You will work closely with vendors and contract manufacturers. 

You will impact and drive Ideon’s objectives forward by focusing on the following activities:

• Product ownership: Own the released hardware and embedded systems across production, deployment, and field operation. Track failure modes to identify opportunities for design and assembly improvements. Support our operations team in repair and recovery.
• Documentation: We have source of truth data stores for our products. Work with the hardware team to populate it and capture all existing designs. Maintain accurate design documentation, BOMs, drawings, block diagrams etc.
• Failure analysis: Lead root cause analysis for production and field issues, defining corrective actions supported by clear verification evidence.
• Engineering change management: Drive ECOs for defect fixes, component substitutions, cost reductions, and manufacturability improvements.
• Manufacturing support: Partner with manufacturing and test teams to resolve yield, test coverage, and process issues during builds.
• Manufacturing ramping: Work with operations and factory to ensure continuity of supply and on-demand scalability of production through takt time improvements, new tooling and improved design of vendor supplied parts.
• Cross‑functional coordination: Work with engineering, manufacturing, and field teams to ensure stable products and predictable change execution. Track product variants and work towards harmonizing designs and upgrading product to the latest version when it returns to factory.

Success in the role looks like:

• Stable, reliable products in production with decreasing field failure modes over time.
• High yield and throughput on the factory floor. Low friction in assembly, happy technicians.
• Capture of all functional test results and ready access to that data when troubleshooting units in the field.
• Factory access to cloud source of truth documentation for reduced manufacturing friction and support effort.
• All existing products fully documented across block diagrams, schematics, gerbers, drawings, BOMs etc.
• Involvement in new product introduction to ensure DFM is considered and new products can scale quickly.

Priorities in the first few months will include:

• Review existing products, known issues, and open ECOs.
• Take ownership of active sustaining and production issues.
• Support manufacturing during active builds, take on vendor and contract manufacturer communications.
• Populate data from existing designs into our repository.
• Establish standards for that repository and ensure the rest of the team follows those conventions.

*Title is dependent on the new employee's registration and accreditation status with Engineers & Geoscientists BC (EGBC).

Qualifications

Must-haves – You’ll need the following to move forward in the hiring process (and be successful in the role).

• 5+ years of product design and manufacturing experience, ideally industrial/mission critical products.
• Bachelor’s (BASc/BEng) in Engineering or equivalent training/experience; P.Eng. in a Canadian province (or EIT actively pursuing licensure).
• Experience with ECO/ECR workflows and product life cycle tools like Arena or Duro.
• Direct, hands on experience shipping products with sophisticated electromechanical integration, optics, extensive electronics or avionics.
• Experience in design for manufacturing. Detailed knowledge of printed circuit board EMS, sheet metal, CNC, injection molding and other manufacturing methods and technologies.
• Experience in CAD software such as Solidworks, Altium Designer (or equivalent ECAD), requirements and verification documentation, and collaboration tools.
• Well developed communication skills in English; able to be assertive and respectful in design reviews and cross functional forums.
• Legally able and currently documented to work full time in Canada.

We also look for the following from all new Ideon team members:

• Experience in or excitement for working in a tech scale-up; happy to wear a few hats and adjust on the fly.
• An ambitious, can-do attitude; you get that we’re doing challenging work and are excited to dive in.
• Enthusiastic and confident to take initiative and be adaptable in an agile, fast-paced environment.
• Solid teamwork skills; you’re accountable to yourself and your team and will jump in to help where you can.
• Creative solutioning mindset with great problem-solving skills.
• Insatiable curiosity paired with a drive to deliver.
• Able to work well under pressure and to meet committed deadlines.
• Great interpersonal skills; able to build relationships with colleagues, customers, and external stakeholders.
• Able to contribute something “extra” to our culture beyond the work that you do, like wowing people with your home-baked goods, sharing improv comedy skills, or organizing sports games.

Nice-to-haves – While it would be nice to if you had some of the below, we’re happy to train, coach and share our experience.

• Exposure to regulated or safety-critical products.
• Experience supporting field-deployed or industrial equipment.
• Experience designing or deploying functional test equipment.
• Knowledge of mining or working with mining equipment.

More Role Details

Location: Ideon’s office is located at #150 - 4611 Viking Way in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada.

Ideon is a hybrid workplace, with some roles required to work fully in office (it’s tricky to manufacture from home!).

This is a hybrid role. We love seeing folks in the office 2+ times a week; you’re welcome to work from home the remainder of the week or come into the office all 5 days if you prefer. Our “be an adult” approach means you have the flexibility to determine your in-office schedule while factoring in the positive impact of face-to-face connection and communication with your leader and teammates.

During your first few months, it’s anticipated you’ll spend more time in the office to support role-specific onboarding and relationship building.

Hours of work: 8 hrs/day, M-F. Typical working hours are 9AM-5PM-ish pacific time; some employees shift slightly earlier or later based on business and personal needs. As Ideon is a high technology company, you may be asked to be flexible with your hours due to business requirements.

Travel: Occasional travel (≤ 10–15%) for test campaigns, vendor visits, and mine‑site pilots; valid passport required and ability to obtain visas as needed.

Field work: Periodic mine‑site and industrial facility work (surface and underground) to support installs, tests, and troubleshooting; driver’s license required. We provide appropriate safety training and PPE.

What We Offer

Salary: The annual salary range for this role, in Canadian dollars, is $90,000 - $120,000. Early equity option allocations upon hire plus the opportunity to earn performance-based option allocations annually are also highlights of our total rewards package.

• An opportunity to work with a dynamic tech scale-up. You will contribute to advancing a ground-breaking solution that generates significant economic and environmental benefit.
• Financial support for accreditation membership, exams, continuing professional development (i.e. P.Eng, P.Geo, CPA)
• Tuition support ($2500/year).
• Extended health and dental benefits, employee assistance program, and health/personal spending accounts to cover things that may not fall into other categories (i.e. exercise classes, transit, daycare, pet insurance).
• Minimum 3 weeks paid time off to start, including an annual paid closure between the Christmas and New Year’s stat holidays.
• 5 paid sick days + other leaves per employment standards legislation.
• For hybrid/remote roles, 2 weeks/year work-from-almost-anywhere.
• Parental leave top-up.
• Employee referral bonus.
• Casual dress – we like our jeans and hoodies.
• Free parking & tasty snacks at the office!
• While we work hard, we also sprinkle social events and learning opportunities into our days (in person and virtually).  

Ideon’s salary ranges are set by role and level, benchmarked against similarly sized Vancouver-area companies. Most new hires start below the top of the range, unless their experience significantly exceeds role requirements. You’ll be asked to share your salary expectations during the application process.

How to Apply, Accommodation Requests, and the Hiring Process

Optional cover letters help us learn more about you beyond what’s on your resumé (i.e. what you’re looking for, role or industry shifts, chocolate or vanilla, cats or dogs, etc.). Also – please submit your documents as PDF files (they display the best).

We aim to provide an approachable and accessible hiring process for every candidate. If there are accommodations our team can make so you can show up as your best self, please let us know in your application.

Once you have submitted your application (via Collage), you will receive a confirmation email outlining what to expect during the hiring process.