Manufacturing Design Engineer

Ulysses•San Francisco, CA

8d•Onsite

About The Position

Ulysses is seeking a Manufacturing Engineer to build the tooling and test infrastructure for their autonomous vehicle production line. This role involves designing and building machines, mechanisms, fixtures, jigs, racks, and handling equipment. The engineer will also develop end-of-line testers, set performance standards, author PFMEAs and control plans, and contribute to the design of packaging and shipping solutions. The position requires a hands-on approach, with the ability to integrate mechanical design, electrical work, actuation, and software development. The goal is to ensure the reliability and quality of the manufactured vehicles before they reach the water.

Requirements

Experience building things that had to work: production tooling, test rigs, lab equipment, competition cars, or robots.
Bachelor's degree (or talented dropout) in Mechanical, Manufacturing, or Mechatronics Engineering, or a related field.
Proficiency in CAD (Onshape, NX, SolidWorks).
Comfortable designing tooling to be machined in-house.
Ability to write the software side of a test rig (Python or equivalent).
Comfortable with sensors, instrumentation, and talking to hardware over a bus.
Fluent across mechanical and electrical domains.
Ability to hold a conversation with firmware engineers about test station requirements.
Opinions about tolerance, fit, and measurement, defensible with numbers.
Ability to work independently in a fast-moving environment.
Machine shop literacy: understanding what is cheap to make and what isn't.
Preference for building fixtures quickly over lengthy specification processes.

Nice To Haves

Experience taking a hardware product from prototype build to production rate.
MES or PLM implementation experience.
Pressure vessel, hyperbaric, or high-consequence test experience, including safety engineering.
Experience with high-power electromechanical systems, battery packs, or BMS integration.
CAM experience and comfort around CNC machines.
Welding and fabrication skills.
Robotic cell or automated assembly implementation.
Exposure to defense manufacturing requirements (ITAR, DFARS, CMMC, or ISO9001-style quality systems).
Experience with ocean hardware.

Responsibilities

Build the machines that build the Mako.
Design the fixtures, jigs, racks and handling equipment for the production line.
Design one-off tools for technicians.
Design workholding for the machine shop.
Stand up assembly stations that are instrumented and connected, capturing data against a serial number.
Build the machines that prove the vehicles and their components.
Design end-of-line testers that include mechanisms, actuation, electrical interfaces, and sequencing software.
Design pressure and leak verification systems to full operating depth.
Design calibration rigs for sensors.
Design dynos for actuator performance characterization.
Set performance limits and define failure protocols.
Author PFMEAs and control plans for build stations.
Make data useful by tracking first-pass yield, failure pareto, and drift.
Feed learnings back upstream to improve design-for-manufacture and design-for-test.
Design how a finished vehicle is packaged and shipped.
Automate processes where volume justifies it, including robotic cells and automated handling.