About this role
About Human ArchiveHuman Archive is a research lab backed by Y Combinator focused on modeling human embodied intelligence.
Humans are the most sophisticated biological systems we have ever observed, yet we still do not fully understand ourselves. Research into human physical intelligence — including the human hand, proprioception, and vision — remains largely unsolved. Our mission is to recover human embodied intelligence as a learned model. To achieve this, we build custom hardware products, deploy them globally at scale, and publish research. Today, our data is used for robotics and world modeling, but the broader opportunity is advancing scientific research into intelligence itself.
Founded by Stanford and UC Berkeley researchers, we are lean, deeply technical, and operate at extreme speed, taking on unglamorous and conventionally impossible problems that directly unlock step-function gains in model capability.
The deployment of capable humanoids at scale will permanently redefine human labor. Undesirable physical work will disappear, and human effort will shift toward a new era of abundant creativity.
We are building the infrastructure to accelerate that transition by assembling the Human Archive mafia. You will own meaningful systems from day one and see your work directly impact model capabilities. This is a once-in-a-generation inflection point. If you want to help reshape physical labor and work on problems that matter at civilizational scale, join us.
Hardware Supply Chain Lead (Shenzhen)The most important operational role on the hardware program. You live in Shenzhen, walk the factory floor, and own the ODM relationship and the component supply.
What you'll work on
ODM relationship and program management
Day-to-day relationship with our manufacturing partner
SOW, milestone schedule, and deliverable tracking
On-site issue resolution at the factory
Contract negotiations and quarterly reviews
Component sourcing
Allocations for critical components (industrial image sensors, IMUs, MEMS sensors, lenses, Li-ion cells)
Pricing, lead times, MOQs across the Chinese supply chain
Backup supplier lists for every critical part
Long-lead component buffer management
Factory operations
In-person factory visits, line audits, first-article inspections, NPI runs
Floor QA and incoming material inspection
Yield improvement and corrective action plans
Translation between English-speaking engineering and Mandarin-speaking factory teams
DFM and manufacturing liaison
DFM reviews between our engineering team and the ODM's process engineers
Test fixture and assembly line design
Real-time production blocker resolution
Commercial and compliance
Contracts, NDAs, IP protection arrangements with Chinese partners
BOM cost tracking and cost-down sweeps
FCC, CE, RoHS, REACH documentation
Required experience
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, not just on email
Strong plus
Background at a hardware company building head-worn, body-worn, or consumer camera products (DJI, Insta360, GoPro, Meta, Anker, Goertek, etc.)
Sony industrial sensor allocation experience
Prior relationships at Tier-1 Chinese ODMs
Scaling hardware from <100 to 10,000+ units/year
About this role You're our senior presence in China from day one. Supply chain runs on trust and proximity. Fly to factories, walk lines, negotiate over dinner. If that sounds tedious, you'll hate it. If it sounds like the job, you'll have more autonomy than most VPs.