---
title: 'Lead Hardware Systems Engineer at Mill'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-hardware-systems-engineer-mill-san-bruno-q3nm57bctpnq'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Lead Hardware Systems Engineer at Mill

- **Company:** Mill
- **Location:** San Bruno, CA
- **Posted:** 2026-03-26
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/mill/jobs/4674899005

## Job description

Mill is a waste prevention technology company reimagining what it means to eliminate waste, starting with food. We build smart systems and infrastructure for homes, businesses, and municipalities that transform food scraps from landfill-bound waste into valuable resources, including chicken feed. Tens of thousands of Mill’s residential food recyclers are already helping households divert millions of pounds of food scraps every year, paving the way for our upcoming launch of Mill Commercial—the industry’s first end-to-end solution for managing, understanding, and preventing food waste in commercial environments (e.g. grocery, restaurants, food services). At Mill, we are passionate about building easy-to-use, beautifully designed technologies that keep food in the food system and out of landfills.

About this Role:

As a Lead Systems Engineer at Mill, you will be responsible for helping ideate, test and define the next generation of Mill’s commercial food recycler technology.  We are a small team and you will work cross-functionally with Electrical/Mechanical Engineers, Algorithms and Product Teams to deliver world class industrial products designed to keep food waste out of landfills. This is a hands-on role and best suited for someone who has a history of working on interdisciplinary projects involving thermal, fluids or chemical processes from concept through production.

Responsibilities:

- Owns system performance: Tech lead for test engineers on the experimental optimization and characterization of system parameters such as temperatures, flow rates, and heat transfer to improve energy efficiency and throughput. Collaborates on analysis and helps derive conclusions and next steps from experimental data.
- Work collaboratively with algorithms and firmware teams to develop control schemes for the system processes to optimize energy consumption and drying time while ensuring reliable function
- Identify opportunities to improve the system design to deliver improved performance or reliability.
- Oversee and direct external simulations work such as CFD, thermal and multiphysics models to help improve system design and performance.
- Determine the system requirements for various components such as fans, condensers, heaters, flow meters and sensors.  Collaborates with other systems engineers to ensure these are well documented and have visibility to other stakeholders.
- Collaborate with mechanical engineers to optimize custom hardware such as mixing paddles, air deflectors and cutting/shredding technology core to the drying and grinding chamber.
- Collaborate with operations and global supply chain managers on sourcing components that will meet our specifications at production volumes.
- Collaborate with mechanical engineers to facilitate the transition of prototype parts and bench top proof of concept to high volume manufacturing methods.

Qualifications:

- 5+ years experience working hands on as a systems or in a lead role with significant thermal and fluid handling aspects. Ideal past experience would include taking new processes from concept through to production.
- An ability to work cross functionally, and interface with a wide range of disciplines to enable cross functional collaboration. Strong communications skills through written, verbal and graphical presentation techniques.
- Ability to leverage python to analyze time series data is preferred, but other means (R, Ai ect) are also acceptable.
- Past experience managing cross functional engineering projects spanning a number of technical disciplines including electrical, mechanical, thermal, and controls.
- Hands-on experience with electromechanical integration and part selection such as blowers, valves, fans and sensors
- BS and or MS degree in related engineering field preferably with focus on Process, Thermal, mechanical or Chemical Engineering. Masters or higher is preferred.
- Some prior startup experience is highly preferred.
- Strong communications skills through written, verbal and graphical presentation techniques
- Ability to work both independently and collaboratively across the entire company as needed

The estimated base salary range for this position is $195k to $255k, which does not include the value of benefits or a potential equity grant. A wide range of factors are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to skill sets, market conditions, experience and training, licensure and certifications, and business and organizational needs.

## About Mill

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Mill makes it easy to keep food out of landfills with innovative, odorless food recycling solutions for homes, workplaces, and cities.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: San Bruno, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2020
- **Founders**: Not publicly available (founded by a team from Nest Labs / Google, though specific names are not widely publicized)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Environmental Services / Consumer Hardware & Software
- Target customers: B2C (homeowners), B2B (grocery and food service partners via Mill Commercial)
- Mission: To eliminate waste for good, starting with the food that ends up in landfills. The goal is to turn kitchen scraps into food for chickens, keeping food in the food system and out of landfills.

## Products & Services
- **Mill Food Recycler (Home)**: An odorless, effortless food recycling bin for the home. It uses intelligent tech to dehydrate and reduce food volume by 80% overnight. Users do not need to press a button; the device senses how much is added. The resulting grounds are shipped to Mill's small-farm partners for use as chicken feed. Type: Consumer Hardware + Service (subscription).
- **Mill Commercial**: A new solution for grocery stores and food service businesses to manage food waste at scale, leveraging the same core technology. Type: B2B Hardware + Service.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Total Funding**: $170.8M across 6 rounds [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill)
- **Key Metric**: 21,000,000+ pounds of food kept out of landfills [mill.com](https://www.mill.com/)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Prelude Ventures (led Series C), Climate Pledge Fund (Amazon), and others [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill)
- **Growth Signals**: 110 total employees [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/mill) (LinkedIn reports 548, likely including contractors/partners) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill); 14 active job postings as of mid-2026; launch of Mill Commercial; headcount growth of +0.4% monthly [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Hardware + Software Moat**: The combination of a custom hardware appliance, embedded firmware, and a computer vision AI engine creates a difficult-to-replicate system.
- **Network Effect**: The more users Mill has, the more food waste is diverted, strengthening their supply chain of grounds for chicken feed and their partnerships with farms.
- **Brand & Design**: A strong focus on industrial design and user experience (odorless, effortless, beautiful) differentiates it from compost pails and garbage disposals.
- **Climate Impact**: Directly addresses methane emissions from landfills (methane is 80x more potent than CO2), giving it a strong mission-driven narrative.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling the Home Business**: Expanding the subscriber base for the home food recycler.
- **Launching Mill Commercial**: Entering the B2B market with grocery and food service partners to capture waste upstream.
- **International Expansion**: Likely future focus, given the global scale of food waste.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven**: Employees are directly working on climate change, keeping food out of landfills.
- **Hybrid Work**: Hybrid work environment (typical time on-site: 2 days a week) [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/mill).
- **Culture**: Described as a mix of hardware, software, and AI engineering with a startup feel. Offers company equity, 401(K), generous parental leave, free snacks, and company-sponsored family events [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/mill).
- **Engineering Focus**: Heavy investment in hardware engineering (San Bruno) and software/AI (Computer Vision). Roles include Hardware Test Engineer, Senior Firmware Engineer, AI Engineer (Computer Vision), and Product Design Engineer [greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/Mill).
- **Employee Rating**: 3.4/5.0 on LinkedIn (23 reviews), with Culture rated 3.7 and Compensation rated 3.6 [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill).

## Sources
1. [mill.com](https://www.mill.com/)
2. [greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/Mill)
3. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/mill)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mill)

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