Head of Product Development (Biomedical Hardware) (Remote, Volunteer, Part-Time)

HEAD OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT - OPEN ARTIFICIAL BRAIN LIFE SUPPORT (OPENABLS) — VOLUNTEER, PART-TIME

Organization: Right to Live Canada

Location: Remote (United States, Canada or Europe)

Time Commitment: Part-time volunteer commitment, target 20 hours per week, including meetings and all role work. Duration negotiable, four month minimum.

This is a remote volunteer opportunity with Right to Live Canada, a virtual-office based Canadian non-profit start-up.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT OPENABLS, VISIT WWW.RIGHTTOLIVE.CA/OPENABLS

------ THE MISSION

Right to Live Canada exists to make continued life a practical, supported, executable option when a preferable living future exists but the systems required to reach it do not.

We were founded in response to systemic poverty-driven euthanasia among Canadians with disabilities: cases in which people pursue MAiD because housing, income, care, treatment, or other essentials required to continue living are unavailable. In those cases, death can become the executable option while a preferable living future remains structurally out of reach.

That distinction defines Right to Live. Right to Live is the only organization in Canada addressing euthanasia with a practical solution model for all Canadians - not merely opposing MAiD, documenting harms, or raising awareness, but building the service, financing, technological, and institutional infrastructure that can make continued life executable. The scale of the issue is already national: 16,499 Canadians received MAiD in 2024, equal to 5.1% of all deaths in Canada, and the number of MAiD provisions increased another 6.9% over 2023 after years of year-over-year growth. MAiD is the fourth leading cause of death in Canada. And those 16,499 deaths capture only euthanasia itself - not Canadians who die because care is inaccessible, support gaps go unresolved, or life-preserving and specialty treatments cannot be reached. We were founded in response to poverty-driven disability euthanasia, but the solution is not limited to disability: Continuity is being built for any Canadian facing a potential death where a preferable living future can still be achieved.

We call that infrastructure Continuity: the service, financial, technological, and institutional architecture required to connect a person facing potential death to a preferable living future. The model is designed to identify what would make continued life viable, assemble the intervention, solve the financing problem, and execute it. Its scope can extend from social and medical supports to frontier technologies where the body itself becomes the limiting factor.

Right to Live is building this through four core areas:

• Continuity Service — the practical service layer: identify what is driving a person toward an avoidable death, design a preferable living future, determine how it can be financed, execute the intervention, and produce an actual outcome rather than another referral dead end.
• Continuity Insurance — developing insurance-based financing so people can pre-fund access to Continuity interventions before a future death-risk scenario becomes an immediate financial crisis.
• Social Brokerage — developing a way to finance people who cannot afford Continuity by turning the anonymized outcome of a life supported into a measurable impact product for global impact buyers.
• Corporate Farming — building and incubating mission-locked organizations around the technologies, services, infrastructure, and concepts Continuity will need, then spinning them out to pursue those missions at full scale.

Right to Live is an early-stage, founder-led Canadian nonprofit built to move at startup speed on problems normally treated as separate: poverty-driven disability euthanasia, the absence of a practical service pathway to preferable living futures, the financing gaps that can make survival inaccessible, and frontier technologies that could preserve continuity when ordinary life-support pathways run out. OpenABLS is one of our most ambitious examples: a nonprofit-led, open-source Artificial Brain Life Support development project working toward a reference design that could sustain a living brain when the body can no longer support it. For the Head of Revenue, the opportunity is to build the revenue engine behind work with both immediate human impact and extraordinary long-term potential.

------ ROLE DESCRIPTION

This is a part-time, volunteer, and remote role for the OpenABLS Head of Product Development with Right to Live Canada.

The Head of Product Development will build and run the OpenABLS product-development department. The department is expected to expand rapidly into multiple specialized teams covering the capabilities required to develop the platform. The Head will turn the project’s direction into a practical plan, coordinate with People Services to recruit and organize the teams required, assign ownership, and ensure those teams steadily deliver the open workbench, Integrated Development Prototype, and reference product.

This is a department-building and management leadership role. The Head will determine which teams and capabilities the project needs, issue recruiting requests for the necessary volunteers, select and organize team leaders, delegate ownership, set expectations, maintain accountability, and remove blockers. Their responsibility is to build and operate the department that develops OpenABLS.

The Head will own the product-development roadmap, keep the technical teams aligned, ensure decisions and progress are documented, and drive the department toward completed development stages. They are expected to pursue rapid, responsible growth using AI-accelerated workflows and open development.

This is the project’s highest-ownership operational leadership role. The ideal candidate has developed, or held substantial responsibility for developing, a biomedical platform, medical device, or complex hardware product from concept through prototype and launch. They must be able to move quickly without sacrificing technical discipline. The target commitment is 20 hours per week, including meetings and all role work.

The Head of Product Development reports to organizational leadership and has authority to build and run the OpenABLS product-development department.

------ QUALIFICATIONS

Universal Requirement:

• You must possess good equipment for virtual meetings, both video and audio.
• You must attend virtual meetings with the capability to give it your full attention, like a dedicated office room or space.

Required:

• Senior product-development, engineering, program, R&D, or operational leadership experience involving complex biomedical, medical-device, life-science, hardware, or electromechanical systems.
• Experience taking a complex product through multiple stages of development, such as concept definition, architecture, prototyping, integration, verification, validation, manufacturing preparation, or launch.
• Demonstrated ability to build, organize, and lead cross-functional teams or departments from an early stage.
• Ability to turn an ambitious hardware concept into a practical roadmap and deliver it through multiple cross-functional teams.
• Experience recruiting or selecting specialists, delegating ownership, establishing accountability, and managing performance across disciplines.
• Technical literacy sufficient to question assumptions, understand specialist input, identify missing capabilities, and make responsible product decisions.
• Ability to use AI-assisted workflows and open development to accelerate execution without lowering standards.
• Excellent leadership, communication, judgment, prioritization, and problem-solving skills in ambiguous environments.
• Comfort working remotely with startup intensity, high autonomy, serious responsibility, and consistent follow-through.

Preferred:

• Direct responsibility for developing and launching a biomedical platform, medical device, laboratory system, life-support technology, or complex hardware product.
• Experience with verification and validation, quality systems, risk management, regulatory strategy, or design controls for regulated products.
• Experience leading open-source hardware, distributed engineering, or technical community-development initiatives.
• Experience working with research institutions, manufacturers, technical partners, sponsors, or external scientific and engineering reviewers.
• Zero-to-one startup experience building a product function, R&D group, or engineering department around an ambitious new platform.

------ TIME COMMITMENT

This is a part-time volunteer role requiring a commitment of 20 hours per week, including all meetings and role work. Right to Live Canada is an early-stage, founder-led organization pursuing rapid national and global expansion. The role is best suited to someone who is comfortable with startup intensity, high responsibility, and a culture of serious dedication to the mission.

------ HOW TO APPLY

Apply through LinkedIn with your resume OR the form on our website ( www.righttolive.ca/volunteer ) or email volunteer@righttolive.ca.

Thank you for your consideration.