Principal Manufacturing Solutions Engineer

Instrumental, Inc. • Palo Alto, CA

1d • $210,000 - $300,000

About The Position

This role is for a Principal Manufacturing Solutions Engineer who is looking for a challenging and varied engineering experience. Instead of iterating on a single product, you will work across diverse customer applications such as AI infrastructure, networking equipment, consumer electronics, and defense. Each project presents a new engineering challenge, a new manufacturing environment, and an opportunity to solve novel problems. As a Principal Manufacturing Solutions Engineer, you will integrate mechanical design, electronics manufacturing expertise, and customer collaboration to develop custom hardware and software solutions that are implemented directly on production lines. This role also offers a unique opportunity to blend technical depth with strategic responsibilities, similar to an MBA or a technical consulting practice, allowing you to own solutions end-to-end. You will manage technical tradeoffs with customer engineering teams, present to operations and business stakeholders, and observe the impact of your design decisions on cost, yield, and throughput. Instrumental provides a supportive team environment with existing solutions to common challenges.

Requirements

• 15+ years in mechanical design, manufacturing engineering, product design, automation, test equipment, or related disciplines
• Excellent communication skills and genuine enthusiasm for working directly with customers
• Experience on high-volume electronics or NPI manufacturing floors, understanding production workflows, line constraints, and challenges in scaling from NPI to mass production
• Strong CAD skills (SolidWorks, Creo, NX, or similar)
• Real fluency in DFM, tolerance analysis, and mechanical design tradeoffs
• A builder's mindset – preference for solving ambiguous problems over waiting for perfectly scoped ones

Nice To Haves

• Startup experience or a track record of driving initiatives independently
• Experience in high-volume consumer electronics
• Experience in robotics or automation
• Experience with AI server or networking hardware
• Experience with optical systems or machine vision

Responsibilities

• Architect customer manufacturing solutions by partnering directly with engineering, manufacturing, and operations teams to understand their production processes, technical requirements, and constraints.
• Translate customer needs into end-to-end inspection solutions, determining the optimal placement of Instrumental stations to maximize coverage, throughput, and business impact.
• Lead technical customer engagements, acting as the technical point of contact throughout the customer lifecycle.
• Balance cycle time, manufacturability, ergonomics, cost, and inspection coverage in collaboration with Sales, Product, Hardware, Software, and Customer Success teams.
• Design production-ready hardware by defining the technical solution for each deployment, including station placement, imaging strategy, mechanical fixtures, optics, and lighting, ensuring seamless integration into high-volume lines.
• Transform manufacturing data (images, test results, BOMs, production records) into actionable insights and solutions that improve visibility and accelerate decision-making on the production floor.

Benefits

• Health
• Vision
• Dental
• Public Transit/Commuter Plans
• Maternity/Paternity Leave

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed