About Nominal
Engineers today are building some of the most ambitious machines humanity has ever seen. They should have AI that’s purpose-built for them.
Nominal is building the Hardware Intelligence Platform that gives engineers increased visibility into complex physical systems, helps them make better decisions, and ultimately gets their products into the real world faster. It brings together the systems, data, intelligence, and applications hardware engineering requires to meet the AI moment. Hardware engineering teams use Nominal to simulate, test, manufacture, and operate the physical systems that keep the world moving, from spacecraft and autonomous vehicles to next-generation energy systems and robotics.
Our customers span aerospace, defense, manufacturing, transportation, energy, and robotics. They include Anduril, Shield AI, Wisk Aero, Pratt Miller Motorsports, Antares, and Shinkei Systems, amongst others, alongside programs within the U.S. Air Force and Navy. Our team draws from SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Applied Intuition, Tesla, and other leading companies, united by a common mission: giving hardware engineers the tools to build the future with speed, safety, and confidence. We're a fast-moving team that owns problems end-to-end, works across disciplines, and thrives at the intersection of hardware and software.
Some of the world’s leading technology investors, including Sequoia, Lightspeed, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Lux Capital, and Insight Partners, are backing Nominal’s ambition to change how machines are built and operated. We’re looking for engineers who want to take on hard problems and help make a new generation of world-changing hardware possible.
Join Nominal as a Product Engineer, Engineering Applications
You'll bring new ideas to life: prototype fast, put them in front of real engineers, and turn the ones that work into polished products that change how hardware gets built and tested.
Our product engineers work at the intersection of product, design, and engineering. You'll shape what we build, not just how we build it—working directly with users, making product decisions, and owning the experience from first idea to customers using it. You'll bring strong frontend craft and the willingness to work across the stack to make the whole product better.
The problems span the full gamut of the hardware development lifecycle. You might be turning scheduling constraints into an intuitive planning experience or helping a technician understand live device state so that they safely take action. These are new product surfaces, not just screens to maintain: you'll help define how they work and how they fit into the rest of Nominal.
🚀 About the role
- Prototype, learn, and ship. Turn loosely defined ideas into working prototypes, put them in front of users early, and take the strongest ideas from zero to one. You'd rather show a working idea than describe one.
- Own product decisions in your area. Partner closely with design, product, and engineering to decide what to build, what to leave out, and when it's ready. Challenge assumptions, explain tradeoffs, and make thoughtful decisions when requirements are incomplete.
- Make complex workflows feel simple. Build experiences that help engineers reason about the hardware development lifecycle. Turn mathematically and operationally complex processes into clear, intuitive workflows.
- Make hardware behavior understandable and actionable. Build tools for authoring HMI diagrams, monitoring and commanding devices, and creating and running automated test sequences. Help users understand system state, act with confidence, and see whether hardware meets its requirements.
- Build systems, not just screens. Use React, TypeScript, and modern web technologies to build scalable product experiences across complex data models, asynchronous workflows, and live updates. Work with backend engineers on APIs and architecture, and contribute across the stack where the product needs it.
- Watch real users and sweat the details. Seek out feedback directly from engineers and technicians, understand how they reason about their work, and keep iterating. Make powerful capabilities approachable without hiding the complexity users need to understand or compromising precision and reliability.
Success in this role comes from combining strong frontend engineering with product judgment. You'll spend as much time thinking about how users reason about complex systems as you will writing React code.
🙌 We'd love to hear from you if you have
- 2+ years building and shipping software products, with strong frontend skills and ownership of features from first idea to real users.
- Strong experience with TypeScript, React, and modern frontend architecture, plus an understanding of how frontend systems interact with APIs and backend services. You're comfortable contributing beyond the interface when needed.
- A habit of prototyping and iterating. You turn ambiguity into something users can try, learn from what happens, and keep improving it.
- Product sense and taste. You naturally ask “Why are we building this?” before “How should I implement it?” You care about interaction design, the details users feel, and what makes a product great.
- A systems mindset. You enjoy reasoning about data models, relationships, state, and asynchronous workflows—not just individual screens.
- Deep empathy for users and clear communication. You learn from them directly, make complicated workflows understandable, and explain technical and product tradeoffs across disciplines.
- A practical approach to modern AI coding tools: you use them to prototype and build, stay curious about better ways of working, and take responsibility for the quality of what you ship.
⚡ Skills that supercharge us
You don't need experience in every area below. We're interested in the strengths you bring and your ability to learn the rest.
- Rich technical interfaces. Experience with planning and scheduling tools, canvas or diagram editors, live data visualization, hardware-control interfaces, or workflow and sequence builders. You’ve helped users understand complex state and take the right next action.
- Connected workflows and shared context. Experience building products where linked objects, versions, evidence, and decisions carry across multiple workflows—and where users need to understand what changed and what still applies.
- AI-powered product experiences. Experience or strong interest in building interfaces where people work with AI: reviewing proposed actions, inspecting supporting evidence, editing results, and staying in control as work runs asynchronously.
- Reusable product systems. Experience building or extending shared interaction patterns, components, permissions, collaboration, or navigation across a growing product.
- Performance and full-stack depth. Experience with large datasets, virtualized interfaces, rendering performance, caching, and asynchronous data flows, or designing APIs and making architectural tradeoffs across the stack.
- Evidence of product craft. You've shipped something people loved enough to tell others about—at work, at a startup, or on your own.
✨ Benefits/Perks
- 🏥 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance
- 🏖️ Unlimited PTO and sick leave
- 🍽️ Free lunch, snacks, and coffee
- 🚀 Professional Development Stipend
- 🛠️ In-office hardware lab with a $250 project stipend
- ✈️ Annual company retreat
- 👶 12 weeks parental leave
- 🌱 Fertility and family planning ($15,000 lifetime)
- 💪 Wellness stipend ($100/month)
- 🛠️ $500/year hardware sensor stipend
- 💼 401(k)
- 📈 Employee-friendly equity terms
- 🏢 In-office 5 days per week
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.
ITAR Requirements
To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.