Intellectual Property & Innovation Lead

We invent things.

We need two people who are unusually good at figuring out which parts of those things are actually new.

Neural Hinge works on physical products, mechanisms, applicators, dispensing and delivery systems. Ideas move quickly here. Some become products. Some become patents. The interesting ones become both.

We are looking for two Innovation & Intellectual Property Leads to join us in Delhi.

This is not an IP administration role.

You will sit close to designers, product development teams, inventors and founders while ideas are still being formed. Your job is to understand what we are trying to create, discover what already exists, challenge our assumptions and help us find the territory that may genuinely be ours.

Sometimes that means proving an idea is novel.

Sometimes it means discovering that it isn't.

Both answers are valuable.

What you will actually do

You will spend a lot of time asking questions.

Has somebody done this before

Where

When

What exactly did they protect

What do their claims actually cover

What did they leave open

Are we looking at a genuinely new mechanism, or simply a new expression of an old one

Could we achieve the same outcome differently

And occasionally:

Are we protecting the wrong thing

You will conduct prior art and patent searches across jurisdictions.

You will read patents properly, including the claims.

You will map patent landscapes around technologies and mechanisms we are exploring.

You will work on patentability assessments and freedom to operate investigations.

You will help identify inventive features while products are still being developed, rather than arriving after everything has already been decided.

You will work with our designers and technical teams to understand mechanisms, drawings, prototypes, product architectures and alternative embodiments.

You will help translate an invention into material that external patent counsel can work with.

You will contribute to invention disclosures, claim thinking, patent drafting inputs, responses and prosecution strategy alongside our external counsel.

And you will help us build an increasingly useful internal memory of technologies, patents, mechanisms, inventors, companies and white spaces.

What we are looking for

Experience is not a number for us.

You may already have several years in patents or intellectual property.

You may be relatively early in your career and have discovered that searching, investigating and understanding how inventions work is something your brain is unusually suited to.

What matters is whether you can think technically, search intelligently and reason precisely.

You need to be comfortable reading technical material.

You should enjoy following a trail.

One patent leads to another. One inventor leads to a company. One citation opens an older branch of technology. One phrase changes the search. Somewhere in that mess, a picture begins to form.

If that sounds tedious, this probably isn't your role.

If losing three hours because you found something interesting sounds strangely satisfying, keep reading.

Three things matter a lot here

Intelligence. Determination. Integrity.

Intelligence means curiosity, reasoning and the ability to distinguish an interesting coincidence from meaningful evidence.

Determination means you keep looking when the obvious search produces nothing.

Integrity matters enormously.

If the evidence says our idea is not novel, we need you to say so.

If you don't know, say you don't know.

If the answer is ambiguous, show us why.

We would much rather hear an inconvenient truth early than receive a beautifully written answer that tells us what we hoped to hear.

Your background

We are deliberately keeping this broad.

You could come from intellectual property, patent research, science, product development, mechanical design, materials, manufacturing, technology research or another technically grounded field.

A background in patents is valuable.

The ability to understand physical inventions is particularly valuable.

You should be able to look at a drawing of a mechanism and begin understanding what the parts are doing to each other.

You do not need to arrive knowing mascara brushes, droppers, applicators, pumps, closures or dispensing systems.

We can teach categories.

What is harder to teach is the instinct to ask:

What exactly is new here

A little about Neural Hinge

Neural Hinge is an independent innovation company based in Delhi and working globally with brands and manufacturers.

Much of our work sits across beauty, skincare, personal care, healthcare and packaging.

But our actual subject is physical product innovation.

How something dispenses.

How it applies.

How it moves.

How it meters.

How it seals.

How components interact.

How a mechanism creates a different consumer experience.

And how enough of those decisions can sometimes create something genuinely new.

Intellectual property is therefore not something we add at the end.

It is part of how we think while we develop.

A good patent search can kill a direction before we waste months pursuing it.

A good FTO investigation can change an architecture.

A well understood claim can trigger a new design direction.

And sometimes understanding what everybody else has protected reveals the small piece of territory nobody has noticed yet.

That is where this role gets interesting.

Before you apply

Please send us your CV.

But don't spend too much time telling us that you are hardworking, passionate and detail oriented.

Give us evidence of how your mind works.

If you have worked on patents, tell us about one search, investigation, patentability question or technical problem that became much more interesting than it first appeared.

If you haven't worked formally in IP, tell us about something technical you became slightly obsessed with understanding.

What were you trying to find out

How did you search

What changed your mind

What did you eventually conclude

We care about the trail almost as much as the answer.

E: [HIDDEN TEXT]

Location: Delhi

Role: Full time, on site

Positions: 2

Don't let the word Lead put you off.

It describes ownership, not age, designation or how many years you have spent working.

If you are curious about inventions and unusually difficult to stop once you start looking for an answer, we should probably talk.