Senior Electrical Engineer at Arn Autonomy

Cox Exponential • South San Francisco, CA

9d • Onsite

About The Position

Arn Autonomy is building autonomous, non-humanoid robotic systems for infrastructure construction in extreme, unstructured environments. Its flagship product, GRID, is an autonomous rebar-tying robot deployed with rebar and concrete contractors on live job sites.

The Senior Electrical Engineer will design, test, and manufacture electronic and electrical subsystems for GRID, including harnesses, control boards, test fixtures, and power electronics intended for harsh environments. This is a hands-on, cross-disciplinary position working with mechanical, software, and manufacturing teams, with mentorship from senior engineers and a high degree of autonomy. The role spans design, assembly, manufacturing, and testing, with responsibilities varying by project and team. It is an in-person role five days a week in the San Francisco Bay Area; candidates must be based in the area or willing to relocate.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• At least 5 years of professional experience designing and developing electronic hardware.
• Strong understanding of analog and digital electronics, power systems, and core electrical engineering principles.
• Experience designing electrical wiring harnesses, including connector selection, wire sizing, shielding, routing, and manufacturing documentation.
• Experience designing for EMI/EMC regulatory compliance and electrical noise immunity, including shielding, filtering, ESD and transient protection, and pre-compliance testing.
• Experience with DC power distribution, voltage regulation, circuit protection, and system-level electrical integration in electromechanical systems.
• Experience developing embedded hardware incorporating microcontrollers, sensors, and digital communication interfaces.
• Proficiency with PCB design tools such as Altium Designer, KiCad, or equivalent.
• Strong hands-on experience with electronic test equipment, board bring-up, hardware debugging, and root-cause analysis.
• Familiarity with design-for-manufacturing and design-for-test principles.
• Ability to independently own hardware development from requirements through prototyping, validation, and integration, while collaborating effectively across engineering disciplines.
• Authorization to work in the United States.
• Must be based in the San Francisco Bay Area or willing to relocate, and able to work in person five days a week.

Nice To Haves

• Experience designing motor controllers, BLDC motor drives, or other power electronics.
• Experience with battery-powered systems, DC-DC converters, and high-current power distribution.
• Experience with communication interfaces such as CAN, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, UART, and USB.
• Embedded firmware development experience in C and Python scripting for test automation or hardware validation.
• Experience with mobile robotics, industrial automation, or other electromechanical systems.
• Experience designing or preparing robotics platforms for UL/ANSI/FCC/CE certification.
• Experience developing ruggedized electronics for outdoor environments, including environmental sealing, vibration resistance, and thermal management.
• Familiarity with functional safety concepts, emergency-stop circuits, interlocks, and fault monitoring.
• Experience transitioning hardware from prototypes to production, including working with PCB fabrication and assembly partners.
• Demonstrated experience with schematic capture and multilayer PCB design, including high-speed digital and RF layout, signal integrity, impedance control, grounding, and stackup design.
• Ability to rapidly learn, evaluate, and adopt new AI tools and platforms as project needs evolve.

Responsibilities

• Own the design and development of multilayer PCBAs for robot subsystems, including motor interfaces, sensor electronics, power distribution, communication interfaces, and test fixtures, from conception through development, bring-up, debugging, and manufacturing.
• Perform schematic capture and PCB layout incorporating high-speed digital, RF, mixed-signal, and power circuitry.
• Develop and maintain electrical system architectures, including DC power distribution, circuit protection, grounding, communication interfaces, and subsystem interconnections.
• Design electronics for electrically noisy environments, addressing grounding, shielding, filtering, signal and power integrity, and transient protection; support pre-compliance troubleshooting and formal EMI/EMC compliance testing.
• Integrate power distribution, electronics, and wiring harnesses into field-ready assemblies with mechanical and software engineers, suitable for outdoor dust, vibration, temperature swings, and weather.
• Identify potential failure modes, implement protection and fault-monitoring mechanisms, and develop procedures to validate hardware performance, reliability, and environmental robustness.
• Participate in system-level and field testing.
• Prepare schematics, layout reviews, engineering studies, test results, and architecture documents to make designs traceable and reproducible.
• Generate and present design concepts and conduct design reviews with team members.
• Apply design-for-manufacturing and design-for-test principles.
• Collaborate with fabrication, assembly, and manufacturing partners on prototype builds, production testing, and hardware revisions.

Benefits

• Kaiser Gold HMO health plan
• Relocation support
• Daily lunches
• Flexible PTO
• Dog pets
• Opportunity to do foundational work on a real product, with designs shipping on GRID, a robot deployed on live construction job sites
• Hands-on experience in electrical design, integration, testing, and debugging on real hardware
• Opportunity to impact a new era of purpose-built robots that create real value
• Collaboration with mechanical, software, and manufacturing engineers in a small, fast-moving team

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior