---
title: 'Chief Engineer at Formlabs'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/chief-engineer-formlabs-somerville-ma-j5tvyaemxmz8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-03'
---

# Chief Engineer at Formlabs

- **Company:** Formlabs
- **Location:** Somerville MA, United States
- **Compensation:** $150k–$250k
- **Posted:** 2026-10-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-03
- **Apply:** https://careers.formlabs.com/job/8337943/apply/?gh_jid=8337943

## Job description

A 3D printer is one of the most demanding machines you can build.

Lasers, optics, precision motion, thermals, airflow, materials handling, chemistry, sensing, controls, and software must all work at micron-scale precision across thousands of layers, with almost no tolerance for error. Making that work reliably is an extraordinary engineering problem.

That’s what we do.

At Formlabs, we’re building 3D printers that are changing the way things get made. We have the smartest minds across every engineering discipline, and the technology they’re building is deployed at more than 50,000 industry leaders worldwide, including Apple, Google, Tesla, New Balance, and NASA.

Your Impact:

Our technical leads drive the decisions that make our products great. From the system level to the details of each subsystem, you will sit at the intersection of technical challenges and high-impact product design decisions. You will be the main technical leader who drives the overall design of a shipping product.

What you’ll do:

- Partner with the Product Team to define product-level performance goals, providing the technical perspective needed to ensure targets are ambitious, achievable, and grounded in sound engineering.
- Lead architectural down-selection across all engineering domains (mechanical, optical, electrical, etc.), identify technological risk, and output a performant, robust system architecture.
- Champion shipping a great product. Ultimately, you’ll be responsible for the product's final performance.
- Own technical readiness for any new technologies and ensure we’re ready to incorporate them into a product.
- Work with domain experts to define subsystem requirements and interfaces.
- Guide team members through the technical implementation. Help them frame technical problems in terms of customer value, make design decisions through engineering rigor and objective data, and think beyond purely technical solutions.
- Identify program risks and keep the team focused on the most important work.

About you:

- You’ve led the technical development of a complex electro-mechanical product.
- You are familiar with a broad range of technologies, including mechanical, electrical, thermal, optical, material science, motion control, and embedded code
- You have demonstrated success across the entire product lifecycle, from initial concept development to high-volume manufacturing
- You are comfortable with a culture of healthy debate and can defend design decisions with objective data
- You maintain high standards for engineering work and offer constructive feedback that helps teammates improve outcomes.

Bonus:

- The products you led were high volume
- The products you led achieved commercial success as well as technical success

Compensation:

Equity is a big part of the compensation package at Formlabs - every employee receives equity because everyone contributes to building the company. We have a lot of confidence in the products we’re building and the impact we’re making, and you should too.

Base pay is the other part of our compensation package, and it is carefully determined based on your skills, experience, and expected impact. Equity and base pay combine to make up your total compensation package at Formlabs.

The annual base pay range for this role is: $150,000—$250,000 USD

## About Formlabs

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Formlabs designs and manufactures professional desktop 3D printers, materials, and software that make industrial-quality additive manufacturing accessible to businesses across a wide range of industries.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series E, valuation $2B as of 2021)
- **Headquarters**: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- **Founded**: 2011
- **Founders**: Max Lobovsky, Natan Linder, David Cranor (MIT graduate students)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: 3D printing hardware, software, and materials; additive manufacturing
- **Target customers**: B2B — from small businesses and entrepreneurs to large enterprises in medical, automotive, aerospace, footwear, consumer goods, and education
- **Mission/purpose**: “Enable anyone to make anything” – expanding access to digital fabrication through affordable, professional 3D printing

## Products & Services
- **SLA 3D Printers (Form 3, Form 3L, Form 4)**: Desktop stereolithography printers that deliver industrial part quality, precision, and repeatability.
- **SLS 3D Printers (Fuse 1, Fuse 1+)**: Selective laser sintering printers for functional, end-use nylon parts.
- **Proprietary Materials**: Over 45 formulations including standard resins, engineering resins, dental materials, and jewelry casting resins.
- **PreForm Software**: Free slicing and print preparation software optimized for Formlabs printers.
- **Fleet Management Software**: Cloud-based platform for managing multiple printers, tracking usage, and automating workflows.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: $2B (reported during the $150M Series E round in 2021)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of over $250M across rounds (Series A–E); 130,000+ printers sold and 300M+ parts printed globally
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: New Enterprise Associates (NEA), DFJ, Tyche Partners, and other leading venture firms; customers include “global leaders” in medical, automotive, aerospace, and footwear
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount of 750+ employees (up from ~550 in recent years); 161 active job postings as of mid-2026, with +631.8% year-over-year growth in postings; expansion into 8 global offices across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific; new manufacturing facility in Millbury, OH

## Competitive Advantages
- **Vertical integration**: In-house design of hardware, software, and materials ensures a tightly optimized user experience and rapid iteration
- **Proprietary ecosystem**: 45+ materials that work exclusively with Formlabs printers, creating a strong lock-in and consistent quality
- **Accessibility + quality**: First to bring SLA and SLS to the professional desktop market at a fraction of the cost of industrial systems
- **Scale and brand trust**: Over 130,000 printers in the field, used in 10+ industries, giving Formlabs the largest installed base of any professional desktop 3D printing company

## Strategic Focus
- **Global expansion**: Deepening presence in Asia (Shenzhen, Tokyo, Singapore) and Europe (Berlin, Budapest)
- **Manufacturing scale**: Building out production capacity in Millbury, Ohio to meet growing demand
- **New market segments**: Developing specialized materials and application-specific printers for dental, jewelry, and mass-customization use cases
- **Software and services**: Enhancing fleet management and workflow automation to move “from prototyping to production”

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Employees describe a culture of “curiosity, autonomy, and results” with a collaborative, hands-on environment. The company invests in community initiatives around access and education.
- **Work model**: Hybrid and onsite roles available across eight global offices; some remote positions (e.g., field service technicians). Locations include Boston (HQ), Millbury, Milwaukee, Berlin, Budapest, Shenzhen, Tokyo, and Singapore.
- **Perks & engineering culture**: Strong R&D focus with roles spanning hardware, software, materials science, and product management. The interview process is designed to be collaborative, and the company encourages internal mobility.
- **Impact**: Directly work on products that enable “lifesaving medical devices” and “Hollywood blockbusters” – a tangible, mission-driven outcome.

## Sources
1. [Formlabs Company Page](https://formlabs.com/company/)
2. [Formlabs Careers](https://careers.formlabs.com/)
3. [Formlabs All Open Roles](https://careers.formlabs.com/all-open-roles/)
4. [Formlabs LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/formlabs)
5. [Built In – What’s It Like to Work at Formlabs](https://builtin.com/company/formlabs/faq/workplace-perception)

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