Robotics Engineer (Electrical / Mechatronics)

TAR•San Francisco, CA

15d•Onsite

About The Position

TAR is building the world's first off-grid power plant for data centers powered by renewable technologies. This role involves building an autonomous field robot that drives rebar foundations into the ground at precise coordinates across utility-scale solar sites. The engineer will own everything electrical on this machine, including power architecture, motor control, sensing, wiring, and embedded systems. This is a ground-floor role with founding-team-level ownership, requiring hands-on work at a pilot site.

Requirements

4–10+ years of electrical engineering experience with meaningful time at a robotics company or on mobile/field robotic systems.
Deep fluency in the electrical side of robots: power electronics, motor control (BLDC/servo and/or hydraulic proportional control), sensor integration, and signal integrity in noisy environments.
Hands-on embedded skills: comfortable writing firmware in C/C++ for real-time control, working with CAN/EtherCAT, and debugging with a scope.
Track record of taking an electromechanical system from schematic to working hardware in the real world.
Pragmatic safety mindset: functional safety, e-stop design, and interlocks for a machine that exerts serious force.

Nice To Haves

High-power battery systems.
Electrical control of hydraulics.
Off-highway, agricultural, or construction equipment.
ROS 2 or similar middleware.
Harsh-environment or outdoor robotics.

Responsibilities

Own the robot’s electrical architecture end to end: battery/power system, power distribution, motor controllers, e-stop and safety circuits, connectors and harnessing that survive dust, heat, and vibration.
Select and integrate motors, drives, and actuators with the mechanical team; tune motor control for locomotion and for the pile-driving tool head.
Design and build the sensing stack: encoders, IMU, load/force sensing on the driving mechanism, RTK-GNSS integration, limit and proximity sensing.
Develop embedded firmware and real-time control: CAN bus architecture, microcontroller/PLC-level control loops, interlocks, fault handling, and telemetry/logging.
Stand up the electrical test and bring-up process: bench testing, HIL where it makes sense, field debugging and root-cause analysis.
Design for the environment: EMI on a machine full of motor drives, thermal management in West Texas summers, ingress protection, and serviceability by field techs.
Support the path from one prototype to a small fleet: wire harness DFM, documentation, and supplier management.