Hardware Engineer

Winnow

Winnow

Other Engineering
London, UK
Posted on Friday, December 1, 2023

About us

Food waste is a $1 trillion problem – costing the world over 1% of global GDP. We’re dead set on solving the problem and looking for people to help us achieve our mission. We, at Winnow, believe that food is far too valuable to waste, and that technology can transform the way we produce food. Our team is made of people who all share a passion for food and technology.

Winnow was founded in London in 2013 to help the hospitality industry prevent food waste through internet of things tools in the kitchen. We have worked with hundreds of sites and are operating in over 30 countries around the world supported by our offices in London, Dubai, Shanghai, Singapore, Romania and North America. We are a rapidly growing company with a strong base of clients who are rolling out our system globally. We have blue-chip customers including Accor Hotels, IKEA, IHG, Marriott, Compass Group and many others.

Winnow’s clients on average reduce waste by over 50% by value and sustain savings. Winnow has now worked with hundreds of sites to reduce food waste, including hotels, universities and schools, staff restaurants, event/hospitality kitchens, buffets, pubs, and high street restaurants. Where the system is permanently adopted, pre-consumer waste value is reduced by 50% - 70% with no detrimental impact to the perceived quality or value of the offer to their customers. This represents a typical improvement of food cost savings of 3% to 8%, commonly a 40%+ increase in profitability for operations.

As the global leader in addressing food waste, we are committed to continue pushing the envelope on what technology can do to solve this problem. Winnow Vision, our new artificial intelligence-based technology, is trained to automatically track all food waste thrown away. It has won awards at the World Economic Forum and has received tremendous enthusiasm from our clients and the industry. You can read more about it on our website and this article in Forbes.

Other recent accolades saw Winnow awarded a winner of Impact 50's most impactful companies to work for. You can read more about it here.

We are passionate about living our values and place them at the centre of everything we do. We are excited about like minded talent who share these values, joining us in our mission:

Equal parts head and heart. We’re both passionate and measured. We carefully balance the need for quick solutions and pragmatism with the ability to step back, take in the bigger picture and build for the long term.

Bravely honest. With each other, that means we’re a transparent organisation where healthy, respectful debate is encouraged. With our customers, we challenge them if we don’t think they’re achieving their goals, whether they be environmental or financial.

People of action. Done is better than perfect, and we learn by boldly doing then rapidly improving. We’re breaking new ground, so we know things might go wrong. But we judge ourselves and each other on our reaction and our resilience.

Bound by food. We’re a diverse bunch, but our belief in the value of food is the common thread in everything we do. With each other, we celebrate through our love and respect for food. With our customers, it means we work hard to develop creative tools to make it easy for chefs to value food.

Hungry and humble. Our product is revolutionary, our people are impressive, and we’re hungry for change. But, we’re just the catalyst for a bigger movement. We stay humble regardless of our success, and make chefs the heroes in this journey.

People and Planet Positive. We’re caretakers of the planet, helping to preserve and support it for now and the future. Our work already minimises the impact that the hospitality industry has on the planet, and we’re also committed to actively reducing our own footprint while doing so. We’re leaving the planet and its people better off than we found them.

This is an opportunity to join an exciting organisation and help us propel our growth at what are truly the most exciting and dynamic points in time in our business. You will work alongside a driven team who are motivated by building an exciting business and leaving the world a better place than we found it.

About the role

Winnow products rely on a combination of proprietary software and a selection of hardware components. Historically Winnow has strived to remain modular and off-the-shelf with the hardware but we are now moving towards more custom, Winnow-led design solutions with an aim to optimise function, cost and reliability.

Our product has been through several generations of software and hardware through its first 9 years, and it continues to evolve using cutting edge technology delivered through reliable and appropriate hardware. We now have a variety of components working in the field in over 30 countries, and it’s down to our hardware team to continue to develop our best in class hardware solutions.

We are looking for an experienced Hardware Engineer to play a pivotal role in delivering a stacked technical roadmap and help us create the next generation of our product.

Reporting to our Product Manager, you’ll be the third member of the Hardware team.

Given the nature of the role, working with our hardware in our Old Street buildroom, this role is 100% office based.

Key responsibilities

  • Be a technical leader in the hardware space; help us drive improvement of the product through a deep understanding of analogue and digital electronic design and best practices
  • Plan and undertake detailed troubleshooting to review, diagnose and identify operational or technical problems within our hardware components and systems
  • Research, test and implement reliable hardware solutions
  • Help execute testing and compliance activities related to the hardware
  • Work closely with the existing hardware team to ensure that our product is robust, fit for purpose, and meets all best design and testing practices
  • Use your technical expertise to work with an interdisciplinary team to build the next generation of AI powered IoT solutions
  • Liaising with third party consultancies and development partners
  • Collaboration with engineers and product management on design specifications to ensure meeting requirements for new products

About you

Education and experience

  • You have a degree in Electronic Engineering or similar
  • You will have significant hands on experience building and delivering hardware solutions which will ideally include experience in an IOT business
  • You will have lead or partly lead the full product life cycle of an electronic design, i.e. inception, creating the design specification, prototyping and PCB design, testing, finalised product, documentation, public release, design changes for latent defects and finally product end
  • You will have experience in identifying suitable components for designs, designing electronic subsystems and implementing these subsystems into a larger design

Personal attributes

  • You are a problem solver who enjoys creatively coming up with hypotheses to unknown issues, and rigorously testing and documenting solutions
  • You are structured in your thinking with a drive to diagnose and solve complex problems
  • You are results driven and can demonstrate how you have delivered effective solutions in a timely manner
  • You are comfortable taking ownership and accountability for your work whilst working effectively as part of a larger team
  • You are persuasive and personable and find building relationships with your customers enjoyable
  • You have proven experience in challenging and questioning the status quo. You enjoy suggesting and implementing creative and innovative solutions to improve the way things get done
  • You are transparent and act with integrity at all times
  • Able to organise self, including effective scheduling, prioritisation and time management skills, managing multiple tasks in parallel and completing tasks to tight deadlines
  • Motivated and curious, you love absorbing new information and are able to reliably recall and figure out how to rapidly apply it. You have the courage, when appropriate, to learn new technology rather than sticking to what you know already.

Our shared attributes

  • You are both passionate and measured. You carefully balance the need for quick solutions and pragmatism with the ability to step back, take in the bigger picture and build for the long term
  • You are transparent in approach and enjoy healthy, respectful debate. You work hard to build open and honest collaborative relationships
  • You get things done and seek to continually improve. Your customers want you on their team
  • You are passionate about the value of food and are committed to the fight against food waste
  • You are humble in approach and quick to pitch in if you see someone struggling
  • Competitive base salary
  • Life insurance (3 times base salary)
  • Employee assistance programme
  • Company part-funded health insurance
  • Matching pension scheme
  • Cycle to work scheme
  • Annual bonus scheme
  • Early finish Friday - leave the office at 3pm when you can!
  • 25 days of paid vacation time in addition to national holidays
  • You will love what you do – waking up every day solving one of the biggest social problems of our generation
  • Committed team members with broad experience who share a common passion to build a world class business
  • Great office space in central London with free happy hours and a great working environment
  • Eyecare voucher scheme
  • Wellness hours and £24 (gross) monthly wellness allowance