From software to hardware: What it means for your job search

Hey John,

In our October edition:

• Initialized did a rebrand! Check out our new website
• Who's hiring this month? We've added 460 new jobs this month
• From software to hardware: What it means for your job search
• Want to build in LA? Join the Icarus After Hours Happy Hour on 11/5
• Resources for working in deep tech

Welcome Icarus!

Meaningful impact, real autonomy, & ground-floor opportunities.

SPATE: Seed
Machine intelligence for finding the next big consumer trend in beauty and wellness.

• Why You Should Work Here: We analyze anonymous, aggregated public consumer data to spot emerging trends early and explain why they're growing, so brands can make product and marketing decisions with confidence.
• Location: US (part-time contract) & International (full-time)
• Open Roles: Product Designer (US, Part-time Contract) & Product Designer (International, Full-time)

Icarus: Seed
Solar-powered aircrafts that fly at 60,000 ft for weeks at a time.

• Why You Should Work Here: No fluff. No fake projects. No slide decks. Extreme ownership is the default. No hand-holding. They move fast. They go to the Mojave at 4 am. They expect results and an obsession with quality and speed.
• Location: El Segundo, CA
• Open Roles: Head of People, Airspace & Range Lead, Strategic Growth Manager, Logistics Lead, Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, Flight Test Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, and more.

Caliza: Seed
The foundation for global financial operations.

• Why You Should Work Here: We are building commercial banking infrastructure for companies that operate across borders. Our customers are importers, exporters, FX brokers, payment companies and fintechs across the globe. Our team has built financial infrastructure at Visa, Nubank, EBANX, Flutterwave, Upstart, Intuit and Silicon Valley Bank.
• Location: Remote Sao Paulo, New York, London, Singapore, & more
• Open Roles: Senior Software Engineers (Front End, Back End, DevOps), Payment Operations Engineer, Business Development Leads (Brazil, Colombia, Nigeria, Europe, Asia), Compliance roles, & Recruiter

Garage: Series A
The AI-powered marketplace transforming how America's most essential assets are bought and sold.

• Why You Should Work Here: We keep America moving and save local governments and essential services businesses time and money. We operate in cities and towns across all 50 states and have surpassed $100M+ in annualized transaction volume on the platform.
• Location: NYC, NY
• Open Roles: Founding GTM Recruiter, Business Operations, Founding Design Engineer, Software Engineer, Account Executive, Growth Ops Associate, SDR, Sales Lead, Growth Marketer, Performance Marketer, Customer Experience Operations, Recruiters, & People Strategy & Operations

Picogrid: Series A
Hardware and software that connect sensors, unmanned platforms, and digital systems for mission-critical operations.

• Why You Should Work Here: Whether you’re building edge software, field hardware, or supporting mission partners, your work shapes the future of defense and public safety.
• Location: El Segundo, CA
• Open Roles: Senior Inventory Control Specialist, Inventory & Receiving Specialist, Site Operations Associate, Visual Designer, Head of Hardware, Head of Software, & Forward Deployed Engineer

Outer Biosciences: Series A
Discovering bioactives from underexplored natural sources to improve human health.

• Why You Should Work Here: We are building the future of human skin health. Founded by a scientific team with deep experience in engineering advanced organ systems, we are discovering and developing novel bioactives that are more effective and safer than anything available today.
• Location: Malden, MA
• Open Roles: Head of Applied Biosciences, Senior Manager of Sales Operations & Revenue Analytics, & Biospecimen Procurement & Operations Manager

Albedo: Series A
Low-flying satellites capturing the highest-resolution visible and thermal imagery commercially available.

• Why You Should Work Here: We make space usable and valuable—not just reachable. We built the only flight-proven platform for Very Low Earth Orbit, turning what was once considered impossible into operational infrastructure.
• Location: Broomfield, CO
• Open Roles: Lead Manufacturing Engineer, Sr. Systems Engineer, Director of Communications, Technical Program Manager, & Business Development and Capture Manager

Sygaldry Technologies: Series A
Quantum-accelerated AI servers to exponentially speed up training and inference.

• Why You Should Work Here: We envision a future of affordable, sustainable, personalized, and secure superintelligence. We're creating the tools to integrate quantum capabilities into AI models and workflows, delivering the infrastructure for quantum superintelligence.
• Location: Ann Arbor, MI
• Open Roles: Director of Talent, Controller, Research Engineer Intern, Experimental Quantum Physicist, Quantum Algorithm Engineer, AI Systems Performance Architect, & Applied AI Scientist

AstroForge: Series A
A deep-space mining company on a mission to extract valuable metals from asteroids.

• Why You Should Work Here: Big ambitions need brilliant minds. We're looking for folks who want to build the future of space mining. Mining asteroids is at a lower cost and a smaller carbon footprint than current terrestrial mining methods. We offer a unique opportunity to join an exciting team looking to expand humanity’s capabilities in space.
• Location: Seal Beach, CA
• Open Roles: Fabrication Technician, Mechanical Engineer (Spacecraft Design), Spacecraft Integration and Test Engineer, CNC Machinist & Fabricator, plus Electrical, Integration & Test, GNC, & Asteroid Mining Internships

Greptile: Series B
The AI code reviewer that understands your codebase.

• Why You Should Work Here: We want to build agents that autonomously validate code changes. Today that looks like AI that reviews pull requests in GitHub, catching bugs and enforcing standards. Greptile reviews 5B lines of code every month for 22,000+ customers. We've scaled from $0 to eight figures in ARR.
• Location: San Francisco, CA
• Open Roles: Head of Talent, Field Marketer, Product Designer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Generalist Engineer (Senior/Staff), Research Engineer, Security Engineer, Product Manager, & Enterprise & Mid-market AE

Ready for ownership? Browse all open roles on our portfolio-wide job board.

Initialized's Head of Talent, Tiffany Foo, shares her thoughts from the front lines of startup hiring.

I’ve been tracking the rise of deep tech startups in the Initialized portfolio, and what it means for the job market. One slice of the Initialized's portfolio wide job board continues to stand out: hardware. Consider the following:

• 20+ portfolio companies building in space, aerospace, defense, energy, robotics, and wearables account for a little over 20% of the job board.
• The shift shows up in our investing too: five years ago, 1:6 portfolio companies were deep tech startups. Today, it’s about 1:3.
• Across Initialized seed and Series A companies, hardware related roles are over 30% of early stage jobs.

Anecdotally, over the past three quarters, I've seen most of the top recruiting firms open specializations in hardware and deep tech recruiting. When the people who follow hiring demand for a living start building dedicated practices around it, job seekers should pay attention.

If you’re weighing your next move, there are a few ways in:

• If you’re a software engineer, consider a hardware startup for your next move: embedded, firmware, and controls work is where your skills carry over.
• If you work in ops, recruiting, supply chain, BD, or finance, target the deep tech sector for ground-floor opportunities that center strong functional generalists. Building physical products takes people who can source parts, run a factory floor, close customers, and hire.
• If you’re a software engineer who likes customers, or a solutions or sales engineer who can code, consider forward deployed* roles and position yourself for them now.
• Startups are also opening new paths for journeymen and skilled trades workers into the startup landscape: machinists, CNC operators, welders, and field, assembly, and avionics technicians are in high demand.

One caveat is location. Hardware roles cluster around the places where the work physically happens. More often than not, deep tech startups are headquartered outside of the traditionally dominant tech epicenters where space and square footage carry premiums. If you’re considering this path, be open to relocation and on-site work in new geographies like LA and the greater SoCal sprawl, Denver, CO, Florida, and in the specific to Initialized's portfolio, Ann Arbor and Ottawa.

The next wave of startup jobs is physical, and there’s a place in it for engineers, operators, and skilled tradespeople alike. Go where the work is.

* Next month, I'll break down the rise of the forward deployed function in greater detail.

Events

• Hardware Engineer: Skills, Salary & Startup Tips. (Underdog.io)
• The 7 Hires a Hardware Startup Needs to Get Right (a16z)
• Defense Tech Hiring in 2026 (Paraform)
• Hardware & Deep Tech Startups Are Making a Comeback (Carta)
• Are Networking Events Worth It For Job Seekers? Insights for Job Seekers (The Hunt Blog)

We want the Initialized Talent Den to be your go-to network for early-stage startup roles. If you are actively job seeking, join the Initialized Talent Den and make sure we know you are actively looking. We will share your profile across our hiring startups.

If you are re-entering the job market, or preparing to do so, and your existing Talent Den profile is more than 6 months old, respond to this email with an updated resume.

I'm startup ready

Stay current with Initialized. Connect with us on our social platforms.

Did you know?
We post new jobs on LinkedIn in our weekly Job Roundup. Follow us to stay in the know!

LinkedIn | X | Threads

Are you startup ready?
startup ready: the combination of technical skill sets, mindset, and life situation preparedness required to thrive in an early stage company.