Founding Electrical Engineer

Ant-Tech

• $130K — $160K *
Aerospace & Defense
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Deep Electrical Engineering expertise with strong knowledge of circuits, signals, and failure modes.
  • Hands-on experience designing, bringing up, and debugging circuit boards.
  • Experience at a hardware, robotics, or defense company where products were built for production.
  • Strong experience with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and custom test fixtures.
  • Strong mechanical and systems intuition including sensors and thermal management.
  • Solid firmware/software fundamentals for hardware control and debugging.
  • Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

  • Design, prototype, and bring up custom circuit boards for sensing and control.
  • Build high-accuracy test fixtures and instrumentation.
  • Develop electrical systems for precision autonomous machines with micron-level tolerances.
  • Debug complex failures across electronics, firmware, and mechanical systems.
  • Build an AI harness for the PCB fabrication machine.
  • Own subsystems end-to-end from circuit schematics to fully working systems.

Benefits

  • 100% on-site in San Francisco.
  • Six days per week working schedule with long hours considered normal.
  • Strong ownership of subsystems and problems instead of individual tickets.
  • Highly hands-on environment prioritizing rapid prototyping and testing.
  • Startup culture requiring autonomy, creativity, and strong problem-solving skills.
Full Job Description
Tasks

Location: San Francisco, USA - On-site
Employment: Full-time / Permanent
🏭 Industry: Robotics / Electronics / Hardware

About the Role

We are looking for a Founding Electrical Engineer to join an early-stage engineering team developing a fully autonomous PCB fabrication machine.

You will work across electronics, robotics, sensing, motion control, test & measurement, firmware, and software, taking systems from initial concepts through prototyping, debugging, and real-world deployment.

Key Responsibilities

  • Design, prototype, and bring up custom circuit boards for sensing, actuation, measurement, and control.
  • Build high-accuracy test fixtures, harnesses, and instrumentation.
  • Develop electrical systems for precision autonomous machines operating at micron-level tolerances.
  • Debug complex failures across electronics, firmware, software, and mechanical systems.
  • Build an agentic/AI harness for the PCB fabrication machine.
  • Own subsystems end-to-end, from circuit schematics, system architecture, and test plans to fully working systems.


Requirements

  • Deep Electrical Engineering expertise is essential, with strong knowledge of circuits, signals, and failure modes.
  • Hands-on experience designing, bringing up, and debugging circuit boards, with the ability to discuss performance, accuracy, and limitations using specific technical details.
  • Experience at a hardware, robotics, or defense company where products were built for production and real-world use.
  • Strong experience with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, power supplies, signal generators, data acquisition systems, and custom test fixtures.
  • Strong mechanical and systems intuition, including motors, sensors, thermal management, vibration, tolerances, grounding, noise, and packaging.
  • Solid firmware/software fundamentals, with the ability to write code for hardware control, testing, and debugging.
  • Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, or equivalent hands-on experience.
  • Senior/Staff-level experience at a leading hardware, robotics, or deep-tech company is highly preferred.


Benefits

Working Environment

  • 100% on-site in San Francisco.
  • Six days per week is considered normal, with long working days.
  • Strong ownership of subsystems and problems, rather than individual tickets.
  • A highly hands-on environment where rapid prototyping and testing are prioritized over lengthy design cycles.
  • Early-stage startup environment requiring autonomy, creativity, and strong problem-solving skills.

This Role Is Ideal For You If:

You are a highly hands-on Electrical Engineer who enjoys building and debugging hardware.
You have experience working on real hardware, not just prototypes or demos.
You can move comfortably between electronics, firmware, software, and mechanical systems.
You enjoy taking a problem from a blank sheet of paper to a working machine.
You want to be one of the early engineering team members building a completely new product.

Interested?
Send us your CV / LinkedIn profile to learn more about the opportunity.

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