5-7 years of experience in electromechanical systems design and integration.
Strong CAD skills for mechanical design and prototyping.
Hands-on PCB design experience from schematic to troubleshooting.
Practical knowledge of motors, encoders, and sensor electronics.
Programming skills in Python, C/C++, or microcontroller languages.
Ability to collaborate across hardware, controls, and machine learning domains.
Experience with robotics hardware, particularly manipulators and dexterous hands is a plus.
Responsibilities
Design and build robot mechanisms and prototypes.
Develop and debug robot electronics including PCBs.
Integrate actuation and sensing systems with firmware.
Characterize and troubleshoot hardware performance issues.
Collaborate with researchers to enhance robot design based on experiments.
Ensure hardware is reproducible and maintainable through documentation.
Explore AI-assisted engineering techniques for design and testing.
Benefits
Opportunity to work in a cutting-edge robotics lab.
Collaborative environment with researchers in learning and control.
Hands-on experience with real robots and hardware integration.
Potential for exploring innovative AI-assisted engineering workflows.
Full Job Description
Position Summary
We are looking for a hands-on mechatronics engineer to design and build the mechanisms, electronics, and sensing systems our robots use to interact with the world. You will take hardware from concept and CAD through fabrication, board bring-up, integration, and testing on physical robots.
Based in our Robotics Lab in Emeryville, California, you will work closely with learning and control researchers on manipulators, dexterous hands, and humanoids. The role combines mechanical and electrical engineering with careful physical experimentation: understanding how a design behaves under load, finding the source of a failure, and improving the hardware. Core Responsibilities
Design and build robot mechanisms. Design mechanisms, end-effectors, arm-hand interfaces, and experimental fixtures; create CAD assemblies, fabrication drawings, and working prototypes.
Develop robot electronics. Design and bring up PCBs for sensing, embedded interfaces, and power distribution, including component selection, schematic capture, layout, and board debugging.
Integrate actuation and sensing. Integrate motors, drives, encoders, force/torque sensors, and tactile sensors with embedded firmware and robot control systems.
Characterize and troubleshoot hardware. Measure and troubleshoot backlash, compliance, friction, drift, latency, thermal behavior, and other effects that influence robot motion and manipulation.
Collaborate on robot design. Work with learning and control researchers to improve geometry, actuation, and sensor placement based on experiments with real robots.
Make hardware reproducible and maintainable. Build repeatable bench and robot tests, document design decisions, and maintain the CAD, PCB, firmware, and assembly files needed to reproduce and service the hardware.
Explore AI-assisted engineering. Explore AI-assisted CAD scripting, firmware development, and test automation, with engineering review and physical validation.
Desired Qualifications
Electromechanical systems experience. Experience delivering complete electromechanical systems, with substantial personal responsibility for design, integration, and debugging.
Mechanical design and prototyping. Strong CAD and mechanical design skills, including tolerancing, fabrication, assembly, and hands-on prototyping.
PCB design and bring-up. Hands-on PCB experience from schematic capture and layout through board bring-up and troubleshooting.
Actuation and electronics. Practical knowledge of motors, encoders, sensor electronics, power distribution, and embedded interfaces.
Programming and firmware. Python, C/C++, or microcontroller programming skills for hardware integration, testing, and data collection.
Experimental judgment and collaboration. A careful, measurement-driven approach to debugging and the ability to collaborate across hardware, controls, and machine learning.
Robotics hardware experience. Robot manipulators, dexterous hands, compliant mechanisms, or contact-rich manipulation. Helpful, but not required.
Sensing and test experience. Force/torque or tactile sensing, actuator characterization, and instrumented test fixtures. Helpful, but not required.
Hardware and learning integration. Hardware iteration informed by control or learning experiments, and AI-assisted engineering workflows. Helpful, but not required.
You will work closely with learning and control researchers, using real robot experiments to inform hardware decisions. This is an opportunity to build complete systems and explore how the robot's body and its intelligence can be developed together.
