---
title: 'Engineering Operations Lead at Specter'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-operations-lead-specter-san-francisco-46fnmhzmqkad'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Engineering Operations Lead at Specter

- **Company:** Specter
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-23
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/specter/03f0a8fb-508d-41a6-b0cb-71b7136a265d

## Job description

Company Background Specter's mission is to help automate the physical world.

Today, we build video sensors with state-of-the-art AI agents that answer any question, anywhere in their environments. Our systems can automatically detect and reason about any physical activity captured on camera, from security incidents (e.g. perimeter intrusion, theft, LPR), to safety monitoring (e.g. PPE detection, injured people), to operational efficiency (e.g. material tracking, congestion monitoring). We offer both long range wireless (1km range) and wired sensor variants to suit any deployment.

Our co-founders Xerxes and Philip are passionate about empowering our partners in the fast approaching world of physical AI and robotics. We are a small, fast growing team who hail from Anduril, Tesla, Uber, and the U.S. Special Forces.

## The Role

Engineering Operations connects Specter's engineering teams to the environments where our products are tested and used. We are looking for an Engineering Operations Lead to build and run the systems that support Specter's engineering organization. You will own the operational work closest to the product, including test sites, internal deployments, hardware servicing, field sustainment, test operations, and the IT and lab infrastructure used by engineering and manufacturing. This is a hands-on operating position for someone who can move comfortably between fieldwork, technical troubleshooting, vendor management, and building repeatable processes. You might spend one day installing hardware on a roof or troubleshooting equipment in a lab, and the next writing a test plan, setting up an asset tracking system, or coordinating with a contractor. You should be comfortable learning unfamiliar technical systems quickly and turning messy, manual processes into reliable operations.

Responsibilities:

- Own Specter's hardware test sites, including site coverage, installations, maintenance, and uptime.
- Run our internal dogfooding program by deploying Specter products across our offices and manufacturing environments.
- Lead test operations for new products and use cases, working directly with engineering to develop and iterate on test plans.
- Manage and PM sustainment issues from the field, triaging problems surfaced by deployed systems, driving root cause with engineering, coordinating fixes and replacements, and closing the loop with deployment and customers.
- Chase down the specific use cases we are building for customers, PMing each one from customer ask to tested, validated capability alongside engineering, deployment, and GTM.
- Turn findings from testing, internal deployments, and field sustainment into clear, prioritized feedback for engineering and product.
- Support competitive product testing, teardowns, and benchmarking.
- Own the reliability of office, lab, and manufacturing IT infrastructure, including the contractors and vendors supporting it.
- Build the systems behind the test fleet, including inventory management, asset tracking, spares, calibration, servicing, and unit-level deployment records.
- Partner with supply chain and engineering teams on equipment procurement and help prepare testing and deployment processes for higher volumes.
- Take ownership of ambiguous, engineering-adjacent operational problems and drive them through to completion.

Qualifications:

- A technically fluent operator with strong hands-on instincts and sound business judgment.
- Experience in engineering operations, test operations, lab or test-site management, field operations, hardware startups, IT operations, or a similar cross-functional technical role.
- Comfort working directly with engineers, technicians, contractors, vendors, and site stakeholders.
- A strong systems mindset and a bias toward measurable, repeatable processes.
- The ability to PM cross-functional issues end to end: clear owners, tight follow-up and closed loops.
- Willingness to install, troubleshoot, and service hardware in the field when needed.
- Strong written communication and documentation skills.
- High ownership, reliable follow-through, and comfort working without much existing structure.
- Interest in hardware, AI, security, critical infrastructure, defense, industrial technology, or real-world deployments.

## About Specter

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Specter builds and deploys long-range wireless sensing networks with AI-powered real-time alerts and semantic search, creating the perception layer for the physical world.
- **Entity Type**: Private (funding stage not publicly disclosed)
- **Headquarters**: Not publicly available (likely US based on website language and job postings)
- **Founded**: Not publicly available
- **Founders**: Not publicly available

## Core Business
- Primary industries: Physical security, critical infrastructure monitoring, industrial IoT, real-time situational awareness
- Target customers: Enterprise and government – including energy companies, data centers, construction firms, ports, stadiums, industrial facilities, and campuses
- Mission statement: "Creating a Software Defined Physical World" – providing instant awareness through real-time alerts, semantic search, and a map-based view of every event

## Products & Services
- **Specter Platform**: A SaaS-based physical intelligence platform that ingests data from long-range wireless sensors (video, thermal, acoustic) and applies general AI (natural language alerts) to detect events such as unauthorized access, safety hazards, equipment anomalies, fires, spills, and perimeter breaches. Features include semantic search, live and historical event detection, and complete situational awareness dashboards.
- **Long-Range Wireless Sensing Network**: Proprietary hardware and software for rugged, wide-area coverage without trenching – deployed across refineries, deserts, offshore platforms, construction sites, and other harsh environments.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue not publicly available; company is actively hiring (Software Engineer – Systems listing) and has a live product across multiple industry verticals.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly available
- **Growth Signals**: Recent website updates as of June 2026; expanding to new use cases (energy, data centers, construction, ports, stadiums); job openings indicate scaling engineering team.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Long-range wireless sensing** that eliminates blind spots without trenching or on-site personnel – a differentiator for remote and harsh environments.
- **General AI with natural language alerts** – users set and query alerts in plain English, lowering the barrier for security and operations teams.
- **Multimodal sensing** (video, thermal, acoustic) combined with real-time analytics for high-fidelity event detection (e.g., PPE compliance, spills, equipment theft, person-down incidents).
- Focus on **critical infrastructure** where downtime or security gaps carry high stakes, creating deep vertical-specific moats.

## Strategic Focus
- Expanding horizontal deployment across energy, data centers, construction, logistics, and campus security.
- Deepening AI capabilities through real-time semantic search and event detection to replace traditional CCTV monitoring.
- Building a “software-defined physical world” that unifies disparate sensors into a single intelligent layer.

## Why Work Here
- Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI + IoT systems that monitor real-world infrastructure at scale.
- Engineering culture likely emphasizes distributed systems, computer vision, edge computing, and high-reliability software (based on job description for Software Engineer – Systems).
- Fast-paced startup environment with a clear product-market fit across multiple verticals.
- Remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated; job posting does not specify location, but likely offers flexibility.

## Sources
1. [specter.co](https://specter.co/)
2. [specter.co/product](https://specter.co/product)
3. [specter.co/industries](https://specter.co/industries)
4. [specter.co/features](https://specter.co/features)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com - Software Engineer – Systems](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/specter/fe26a690-7934-46f4-bce2-8d8c5495a0dc)

## Other roles at Specter

- [Wireless Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/wireless-software-engineer-specter-san-francisco-zvjchm89fzv0) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer - Applied AI](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-applied-ai-specter-san-francisco-p7er9310dx06) — San Francisco, CA
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