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 realize the right to live as a practical, supported, executable choice.

We were founded in response to systemic poverty-driven euthanasia amongst Canadians with disabilities: cases where Canadians choose MAiD because they cannot access the essentials required to continue living. This is a specific form of economic euthanasia: euthanasia where a preferable living future existed, but was not achieved.

That crisis remains our founding application point. It is not the boundary of our work.

Right to Live Canada is building Continuity: the service, financial, technological, and institutional architecture required to keep life connected to preferable living futures. We work from the recognition that biological escape velocity may become achievable for a significant portion of people alive today, and that the right to live must now be pursued with the seriousness, urgency, and scale appropriate to that possibility.

Our four core areas are:

• Continuity Service — developing a service to identify, propose, finance and execute preferable living futures in the event of potential death
• Continuity Insurance — developing a finance model for Continuity Service in the event of potential death scenarios
• Social Brokerage — developing a system to productize and sell the anonymized outcome of a life supported to the global market as an impact product in exchange for the capital to accomplish it, in order to fund those who cannot afford Continuity Service or Insurance
• Corporate Farming — developing a global-scale system to take concepts, form a structure around them starting with a team, incubate them internally and nurture their growth towards incorporation, and then emitting them as formed non-profits dedicated to their founding concept such as a technology, project, infrastructure or issue.

Right to Live Canada is a founder-centric, early-stage non-profit pursuing rapid national and global expansion. We use the advantages of the non-profit form — volunteer-class labor, sponsorship sales, grants, subsidized infrastructure, open development, impact monetization, and institutional farming — to uphold and extend the right to live for humans and, ultimately, other conscious beings.

OpenABLS is Right to Live Canada’s open-source engineering project to build Artificial Brain Life Support: a platform intended to sustain a living brain when the body can no longer support it. It is currently an early-stage, non-clinical development project focused on an open research workbench, to be followed by an Integrated Development Prototype and an openly documented reference product. The long-term system would combine perfusion and life-support hardware with brain-computer interfaces, software and possible robotic embodiment so that a person could continue to communicate, exercise agency and participate in the world.

OpenABLS arose from a practical problem within Right to Live Canada’s Continuity mission. For people facing MAiD or otherwise foreseeable death because the body is failing, a genuinely preferable living future may require a technology that addresses the loss of the body itself. Artificial Brain Life Support was identified as the platform with the broadest potential to open those possibilities. If successfully developed, it could make continued life less dependent on the survival of the original body and provide a foundation that improves over time as brain-computer interface, artificial intelligence, robotics and life-support technologies advance.

------ 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.