Patent Agent, Hardware at Hark in San Jose

Job description

• Hark is seeking a Patent Agent to build the hardware side of our patent portfolio from the ground up. This person will own invention harvesting, drafting, and prosecution across our hardware technologies, and will shape how the company decides what to protect as its products move from architecture to prototype to production.
• This role sits inside Legal but lives with engineering. You will be in design reviews and prototype reviews, sitting with electrical, mechanical, systems, firmware, and product design engineers, finding the inventions before anyone has thought to write them down. Then you will go draft the applications yourself.
• A strong portfolio is not measured by the number of patents filed. It requires knowing which technologies will matter most, anticipating how products and competitors will evolve, and obtaining claims that protect the underlying innovation rather than one implementation of it. This is a hands-on opportunity for someone who wants to author that strategy rather than inherit it.

Responsibilities

• Build and execute the patent strategy for Hark's hardware products and platform technologies, including portfolio architecture across core, platform, and product-specific innovations
• Work directly with electrical, mechanical, systems, firmware, wireless, sensor, and product design engineers to identify patentable inventions
• Draft and prosecute U.S. and international applications covering hardware and hardware-software systems, translating complex engineering into technically accurate and strategically broad claims
• Prepare office action responses, conduct examiner interviews, and develop prosecution strategies aimed at commercially meaningful claim scope
• Manage continuation, divisional, and design patent strategy as products and architectures evolve
• Review and improve applications prepared by outside counsel, and work with international counsel on PCT and foreign prosecution strategy
• Conduct patentability and prior art analyses, monitor competitive patent activity, and support freedom-to-operate work ahead of product milestones
• Own inventorship determinations, assignment hygiene, and IDS practice across the portfolio

Requirements

• Registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, with an active registration number
• Bachelor's degree or higher in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, physics, or a closely related technical discipline
• 5+ years drafting and prosecuting patent applications involving complex hardware technologies, at a firm, in-house, or both
• Experience at a consumer electronics, hardware, semiconductor, wearable, mobile device, or AI hardware company — you know what happens to a patent strategy when an architecture changes late in a build
• You can take an engineer's half-formed disclosure and turn it into a complete application, claims and figures included, without supervision
• Strong command of electrical, mechanical, and systems-level engineering concepts, and the confidence to push an inventor on the details
• Comfortable building in ambiguity — you've stood up prosecution processes from scratch, not just inherited them
• Hands-on by default; you're drafting, not just managing outside counsel
• Excellent written communication and exceptional attention to technical detail
• Design patent practice for consumer products, and coordination between utility and design filings
• Experience managing substantial international portfolios across multiple jurisdictions
• Competitive patent landscaping and freedom-to-operate analysis
• Engineering experience prior to entering patent practice, or an advanced technical degree

Skills

Required

• Excellent written communication

Benefits

• The US base salary range for this full-time position is between $150,000 – $220,000 annually.
• The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended. (edited)