Head of Operations

The role

The Hardware Supply Chain Lead will own the ODM relationship and component supply in Shenzhen. You will manage manufacturing partners, source components, and oversee factory operations and compliance.

What you will do

• Manage day-to-day relationship with manufacturing partner
• Track SOW, milestone schedule, and deliverables
• Resolve issues on-site at the factory
• Conduct contract negotiations and quarterly reviews
• Manage allocations for critical components
• Handle pricing, lead times, and MOQs across the Chinese supply chain
• Manage long-lead component buffers
• Perform in-person factory visits, line audits, and inspections
• Perform floor QA and incoming material inspection
• Translate between English-speaking engineering and Mandarin-speaking factory teams

Required qualifications

• Mandarin-native plus business-fluent English
• Resident in Shenzhen or willing to relocate
• 5+ years in hardware supply chain or ODM management roles in China
• Deep working network across the Chinese consumer electronics supply chain
• Comfortable on factory floors and in vendor meetings

Nice to have

• Background at a hardware company building head-worn, body-worn, or consumer camera products
• Sony industrial sensor allocation experience
• Prior relationships at Tier-1 Chinese ODMs
• Scaling hardware from <100 to 10,000+ units/year

About the company

Human Archive is a research lab backed by Y Combinator focused on modeling human embodied intelligence. Founded by Stanford and UC Berkeley researchers, the company builds custom hardware products and publishes research.