Engineering Team at Lumafield

When we polled our team, this was the number one voted value.

At Lumafield, we’re humbled to work with incredibly smart and talented people who are willing to share their knowledge. Folks on our team come from smaller startups as well as places like Google and Pixar. One of our mechanical engineers has previous experience working on software that’s similar to what we’re trying to build, while another engineer previously came from The New York Times. We are constantly learning from one another and view our varied backgrounds and perspectives as assets.

As a smaller team, we’re thoughtful about the team members we bring on and look for stellar engineers to help build the best product possible. This doesn’t necessarily mean coming from a big name company or university – at the end of the day we’re looking for people who are motivated and hard-working. As we continue to grow, we plan to build more junior talent, too.

We’re transforming how people understand the world of manufacturing.

At Lumafield, we’re creating imaging technology in the form of hardware and software systems. Our revolutionary machine and entirely new cloud-based SAAS platform allows a wide range of objects – including everything from sneakers to car parts to foods – to be scanned. From there, customers can use the platform to measure parts and assemblies, and to run powerful analyses of defects and other features of the scanned part. Designing a web-based visualization and analysis tool is a highly visual process and there are no cut and dry answers for how we approach it. For instance, we use certain libraries to build various features and we also implement algorithms from research papers. There’s no rulebook for what we’re building, which is why we look for engineers who are excited about getting creative and thinking outside the box.

We actively avoid silos.

Since people on the team live on both coasts, we make it a priority to communicate openly. We keep each other updated via Slack and Zoom, though we’re of course mindful of each other’s time and set working hours. As a new engineer on the team, you’ll collaborate closely with everyone across engineering, on both the mechanical and software side. You’ll work hand-in-hand with people on the hardware team, since our integrated platform inherently requires tight feedback loops. Depending on the project, you’ll also work with different folks on the research and web side of the software team. However, since our organization is pretty flat, we really view each other as one full-stack engineering team. Everyone in the company has access to the head of product, the head of engineering, and our CEO. You should feel empowered to reach out to whoever you need to at any time!

We place a premium on transparency and it starts at the leadership level.

As a company, we value transparency and our CEO, Eduardo, sets a good example. In addition to a weekly office hour where he’s happy to answer any questions, he also holds AMAs at our monthly company all hands. We also use this time to discuss exciting milestones, product updates, customer stories, and monthly sales wins.

While team members span both coasts, we make sure everyone stays in the loop by communicating regularly via public Slack channels. Meeting calendars are also open, so anyone can attend any meeting if they’d like. Finally, we use a shared Google Drive, so everyone has access to company resources.

We’re planning to double our engineering team in the next year.

It’s an exciting time to join Lumafield as we emerged from stealth mode in April 2022 and are growing rapidly. Our agility as a small startup allows us to ship quickly and make decisions without a ton of bureaucracy or red tape. Engineers are empowered to propose new ideas, drive projects, and make decisions to move things forward. While it’s safe to say there’s a high sense of urgency, it’s not frantic. We love to ship early and often, then iterate as needed. One of our core values is speed – we believe it’s our greatest advantage and aim to ship products faster for less money than anyone else would dare attempt.

We raised a $35M Series B in September 2022, wwhich will help transform the way engineers and designers work on everything from cosmetics packaging to bike parts. In the next year we plan to double our engineering team. If you’re excited about joining a fast-moving team, we’d love to hear from you!

We’re all bonded by the mission to give engineers, designers, and medical practitioners more confidence in their products.

We’re currently in the building phase and constantly iterating, with the goal of making our platform 10 times cheaper than what’s on the market today. To that end, we value speed over perfection. It’s more important to us to get work out as quickly as possible, and then iterate based on the feedback we receive from our customers. Engineers join regular fireside chats with customers to learn firsthand what’s working and what needs to be improved. This allows us to ensure we’re building the right thing and improving our product in a way that will actually have the most impact for our customers.

Given that we’re early-stage, our customers know that things won’t be 100% perfect and that’s okay, they’re happy to share their feedback. From there, we can easily adjust our roadmap to prioritize the features that will serve them best. Mindfully investing in tech debt, not over quality, but over perfectionist quality is what helps us move the needle and gives us an edge over legacy incumbents in the space.

Innovation requires taking risks.

Across the board, we work hard to ensure we create a safe space to try new things. Even if we’re not 100% sure something will succeed, we take calculated risks and learn from our mistakes along the way. While we don’t have structured postmortems at this point, we do have regular roundtable discussions to reflect on takeaways. For example, we recently launched our first version of a new platform to users and then gathered as a frontend team to take stock of what went well and what went less well. Then, as a broader software team, we compiled a list of things we intentionally put off from the previous quarter in order to get the release out and prioritize our work.

We’re all in the same boat, working toward a common goal, so there’s never any blame placed on an individual. Instead, we strive to create a culture where it’s safe to call out if you didn’t do something well, think there could be an improvement, or simply need to ask for help. Ultimately, both our successes and failures are shared.

Backend, frontend, project management – you’ll have the opportunity to do it all.

At this stage, given our company’s size, engineers are involved in many different things. It’s not required that new hires have a wide breadth of experience, but we do look for people who have a willingness to jump in and take on a wide variety of tasks (even if it’s not in your job description). Whether it’s helping out on the front end, back end, in technical program management, or even project management, no two days are the same and you’ll have the opportunity to be exposed to all different parts of the company.