Robotics Technician

Lightspeed•Northbrook, IL

3d•$60,000 - $70,000•Onsite

About The Position

LightSpeed Build Technologies is revolutionizing the construction industry through AI-powered robotics. Our flagship systems—BRUTE for automated wall panel manufacturing and DEX for on-site collaborative construction—are addressing the global housing crisis by delivering unprecedented speed, precision, and affordability in homebuilding. We're an early-stage venture, building an automated physical system driven by robotic arms, live sensing, and a real-time software layer. We're past the idea stage and moving fast toward a working demo. We need a technician who can build, modify, and fix the physical machine. Our cells are custom and changing weekly, so the work is rarely "replace the part per the manual." It's taking a commercial nailer and making it something a robot can drive, mounting and wiring sensors onto equipment never designed for them, and figuring out why an arm is binding at the same point every cycle. Precision matters: a fixture that's a millimeter off or a mount that drifts under load shows up as a failed panel downstream. You'll work directly with the engineers designing the system, and you'll usually be the first person to find out something doesn't work.

Requirements

Hands-on trade experience - mechanic, millwright, maintenance tech, fabricator, machinist, automotive/equipment tech, or similar, in a real physical setting
Fabrication and mechanical work - confident with hand and power tools, drilling and tapping, basic metalwork, mounting and shimming things so they stay put
Metrology - fluent with calipers, micrometers, dial indicators, squares, feeler gauges, and levels. You can measure to a stated tolerance, check flatness, squareness, and parallelism, verify fixture and tool alignment, and recognize when a stack-up of small errors is what's actually causing the problem. You trust the measurement over the eyeball
Reading mechanical drawings and following a stated tolerance; comfortable with GD&T basics or willing to learn them fast
Working knowledge of safe practices around industrial equipment - lockout/tagout, PPE, and the awareness that a robot cell can crush, pinch, or move unexpectedly
Diagnostic instinct - able to work a problem from symptom to cause on a machine you didn't build, without a troubleshooting tree
Comfortable with ambiguity and change: most of what we build has no manual and will be different next month
Clear communication, including writing down what you did
High school diploma or equivalent. Trade school, apprenticeship, or an associate's in a technical field is a plus, but we care far more about what you've built and fixed than about credentials

Nice To Haves

Electrical work - reading electrical schematics, terminating connectors, wiring control panels and remote I/O, using a multimeter to check continuity, voltage, and signal
Pneumatics, hydraulics, VFDs, servos, or stepper systems
Advanced metrology - laser trackers, CMM, optical alignment, or robot cell calibration work
Robot cell experience - teach pendants, jogging arms, touching up taught points, tool changes, fixture setup
Microcontroller tinkering - Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or any experience hacking a chip into something that didn't have one
Welding, machining, or CNC
Woodworking, framing, cabinet shop, or lumber handling background
Forklift or scissor/aerial lift certification

Responsibilities

Modify and retrofit tools and equipment so they can be driven by our control system - fabricating brackets and mounts, cutting, drilling, tapping, adapting pneumatics, adding actuation to tools that shipped as handheld
Install and wire sensors, switches, actuators, and I/O; route and terminate cabling; build and label harnesses that survive a production cell
Assemble, align, and calibrate robot cells, tooling, and fixtures as new builds come up; measure and verify that what you built matches what was drawn, and make mechanical adjustments as designs change
Troubleshoot mechanical, pneumatic, and electrical faults on arms, tooling, and conveyance - isolate the root cause, fix what you can, and hand engineering a clear, specific description of what you found
Work safely around energized and moving equipment: apply lockout/tagout before service, use appropriate PPE, and speak up when a guard, e-stop, or procedure isn't right
Keep the machine's real state documented - redline schematics and drawings as things change, label what you build, record measurements, and log fixes so the next person isn't starting from zero
Help stand up our preventive maintenance routine and spare parts list from scratch, and support demos and test runs end to end
Other duties as assigned - this is an early-stage team and the work shifts