Robotics Mechatronics Engineer

Avatar Robotics • San Francisco, CA

8d • Onsite

About The Position

Avatar Robotics is hiring a Robotics Mechatronics Engineer to develop its robot fleet. This mechanically led role spans physical design and assembly, hardware integration, and manipulation controls. The engineer will design, fabricate, and assemble warehouse robots, integrate them with the software stack, and tune the controls that enable robot manipulation. The company is a small team deploying robot units into facilities and building flexible fleets for industrial work.

The role owns hardware integration and manipulation control. The software team owns autonomy, teleoperation, and the real-time stack. Development takes place on physical robots in person, with work on the floor most days. The engineer must be located in or willing to relocate to San Francisco, California, and travel to customer warehouse sites for deployment and testing. Physical work includes lifting robot components and working in warehouse environments with hand and power tools. Applicants are asked to include photos, CAD, or video of a robot they have built.

Requirements

• At least 4 years of experience building physical robots, including having shipped at least one robot.
• Strong CAD skills, using SolidWorks, Onshape, Fusion, or equivalent.
• Hands-on electromechanical skills, including harnesses, soldering, motors, sensors, and scopes.
• Solid controls fundamentals, including kinematics, PID and trajectory control, and calibration on real hardware.
• Experience integrating arms and sensors with a software stack through ROS/ROS 2 and vendor SDKs.
• Firmware and low-level interface experience, including CAN, EtherCAT, or serial.
• Practical Python skills and comfort working in Linux.
• Ability to read and modify C++.
• Located in or willing to relocate to San Francisco, California.
• Able to perform physical work, including lifting robot components and using hand and power tools in warehouse environments.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with mobile manipulators, warehouse automation, cobots, force control, or end-of-arm tooling.

Responsibilities

• Design and fabricate custom parts, including brackets, mounts, end-of-arm tooling, and cable management.
• Assemble and integrate purchased arms, bases, grippers, and sensors into complete robots.
• Integrate new hardware into the software stack using vendor SDKs, firmware, and ROS 2.
• Develop and tune manipulation controls, including trajectory following, grasping, and force and compliance behavior.
• Calibrate arms and sensors, and tune controllers for repeatability, speed, and payload.
• Iterate on mechanical designs and control behavior based on results from the floor.
• Build wiring harnesses and power distribution.
• Test robots before they ship and document how they were built.
• Travel to customer warehouse sites for deployment and testing.

What This Job Offers

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