Senior Sensor Engineering Leader

Senstar is looking for a senior engineering leader to own the delivery and evolution of our perimeter intrusion detection sensor portfolio — products that combine custom hardware, embedded software, and advanced signal processing, deployed at critical sites around the world.

This is a leadership role for someone who has built sensor or embedded products end-to-end and can lead a combined hardware and software organization with equal credibility on both sides. You will manage a team that includes an embedded software group led by a development manager, senior hardware and RF/optical design engineers, verification staff, and a design services function — roughly ten engineers in total, including experienced managers, long-tenured senior individual contributors, and early-career engineers you will be expected to grow.

The mandate spans both horizons: driving the development of our next-generation sensor platform while sustaining mature fielded products with long lifecycles, demanding environments, and customers who depend on them for physical security. You will partner closely — through influence rather than authority — with a principal systems architect who holds cross-system design authority, and with an AI/ML specialist integrating deep-learning-based detection into the sensor line.
Responsibilities

- Own end-to-end delivery of the sensor product portfolio across hardware design, embedded software, signal processing, and verification.

- Lead a combined engineering organization that includes development managers, senior individual contributors, and early-career staff.

- Drive execution of the next-generation perimeter intrusion detection platform while sustaining and supporting fielded products through long product lifecycles.

- Balance new product development against sustaining engineering, field escalations, and manufacturing support, and make the trade-offs explicit.

- Partner with the systems architect who owns cross-system design authority: the architect is accountable for the design being right; you are accountable for delivery, staffing, and execution.

- Work with our AI/ML specialist to productionize neural-network-based detection within embedded sensor platforms.

- Develop people deliberately: coach a first-time development manager, progress a technical lead toward formal team leadership, and advance early-career engineers from execution roles into independent development roles.

- Manage senior, long-tenured individual contributors who need technical engagement and prioritization rather than close supervision.

- Lead across sites: the team is distributed, and so is the customer base.

- Own planning and roadmap commitments with Product Management, including estimation, resourcing, and make/buy decisions.

- Oversee the design services and documentation interface into manufacturing, including design-for-manufacture and regulatory/compliance requirements.

- Own quality outcomes for the sensor line, including escalation and resolution of complex field issues spanning hardware, firmware, and installation environments.

- Establish engineering standards, design review practices, and delivery discipline across hardware and embedded software.

- Recruit and retain senior engineering talent in competitive hardware and embedded software markets.

Required Experience

- Proven engineering leadership of combined hardware and embedded software teams, including managing other managers.

- Deep technical grounding in at least one core sensor domain — embedded systems, signal processing, RF, electro-optics/photonics, or electronics design — sufficient to hold credibility with senior specialists in each.

- Experience delivering physical products end-to-end: concept through design, verification, certification, manufacturing transfer, and field support.

- Experience with long-lifecycle products where backward compatibility, installed-base support, and reliability are first-order constraints.

- A track record of developin