Principal Electrical Engineer - Compute and Sensing

Apptronik•Austin, TX

4h•Hybrid

About The Position

Apptronik is a human-centered robotics company developing AI-powered robots to support humanity in every facet of life. Our flagship humanoid robot, Apollo, is built to collaborate thoughtfully with people, starting with critical industries such as manufacturing and logistics, with future applications in healthcare, the home, and beyond. We operate at the cutting edge of embodied AI, applying our expertise across the full robotics stack to solve some of society's most important problems. You will join a team dedicated to bringing Apollo to market at scale, tackling the complex challenges like safety, commercialization, and mass production to change the world for the better.

Requirements

M.S. or Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
12+ years of experience in high-performance hardware design, with a focus on robotics, autonomous vehicles, or aerospace.
Proven track record of designing custom carrier boards for NVIDIA Jetson or similar high-end compute modules.
Mastery of high-speed digital design (PCIe, DDR4/5, GMSL, 10GbE).
Experience integrating multi-sensor suites with precise hardware-level time synchronization.
Hands-on experience with Functional Safety architecture (ISO 26262 or equivalent).
Proficiency with Altium Designer (or similar) and hardware simulation tools (SPICE, Ansys, or HyperLynx).

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end design of Apollo’s safe compute architecture. Select core processing elements (SoCs, FPGAs, MCUs) and design system-level redundancy to meet real-time performance requirements.
Lead the design and validation of custom carrier boards for high-performance modules (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson). Expertly manage power delivery networks (PDN), thermal dissipation strategies, and high-speed signal integrity for complex interfaces.
Drive Design for Manufacturability (DFM) and Design for Reliability (DFR) for compute modules, ensuring they can withstand the high-vibration and dynamic thermal environments of a mobile humanoid robot.
Define the electrical architecture for a full perception stack, including LiDAR, depth cameras, IMUs, and tactile sensors.
Architect the high-bandwidth pipelines and synchronization protocols required for sensor fusion. Manage complex communication interfaces (GigE, GMSL2, USB 3.0, MIPI) to ensure low-latency data delivery to the perception software.
Drive the physical and logical architecture decisions required to meet Functional Safety standards.
Design hardware-level redundancy, fail-safe mechanisms, and Built-In Tests (BIT) to achieve required safety integrity levels (ASIL/SIL) for operation in human-occupied environments.
Implement robust hardware diagnostics to monitor the health of the compute and sensing backbone in real-time.
Define the long-term technical roadmap for Apollo’s compute and sensing evolution, identifying emerging technologies (e.g., new SoCs or sensor modalities) that will keep Apptronik at the cutting edge.
Act as the ultimate technical authority on compute/sensing during design reviews with the Controls, Perception, and Systems Engineering teams.
Provide deep technical mentorship to electrical and embedded engineers, fostering a culture of rigorous engineering and innovation without the burden of administrative management.