Senior Electrical Engineer

Machina Labs•Los Angeles, CA

25d•$165,000 - $190,000•Onsite

About The Position

Machina Labs is seeking a Senior Electrical Engineer to serve as an individual contributor and technical lead for the electrical systems behind its robotic manufacturing platforms. The role owns electrical design across the production cell and future platforms, including architecture, standards, interfaces, documentation, and supplier relationships. The engineer makes decisions affecting cost, schedule, compliance, and production readiness; leads technical engagement with suppliers, certification bodies, and customers; and establishes electrical design standards across Mechanical, Robotics, Automation, and Manufacturing. The position combines hands-on electrical engineering with technical leadership as the team grows. It covers reusable electrical architecture and documentation, interface governance, power distribution and signal integrity, supplier-built panels and harnesses, custom PCBAs and instrumentation, machinery compliance and safety, and design reviews and mentorship. The engineer will work onsite in Chatsworth, California, with occasional travel to suppliers, customers, or other Machina factory sites. Due to access to export-controlled information, the role requires a U.S. person as defined under ITAR.

Requirements

B.S. in Electrical Engineering or equivalent.
7+ years of electrical engineering experience on industrial machinery, robotics, CNC, or automation equipment, including end-to-end ownership of electrical design across multiple machines or a platform.
Experience setting electrical standards, running design reviews, and developing other engineers.
Electronic system, device, or instrumentation design experience, including PCBA schematics, bring-up, test, and validation.
Experience with 480VAC power distribution and 24VDC control, including panel design, drives, PLC I/O, safety circuits, and grounding.
Industrial network design experience with EtherCAT, EtherNet/IP, or PROFINET.
Experience diagnosing or mitigating EMI/EMC issues involving servo drives and sensor wiring in high-noise industrial environments, including shielding, grounding, and cable routing.
Fluency in electrical CAD such as EPLAN, SolidWorks Electrical, AutoCAD Electrical, or similar, and ability to produce release-quality schematics and harness drawings.
Experience as the engineering owner for contract electrical system builds such as panels or harnesses.
Strong documentation and change control discipline.
Must be a U.S. person as defined under ITAR due to access to export-controlled information.
Able to work onsite in Chatsworth, CA, with occasional travel to suppliers, customers, or additional Machina factory sites.

Nice To Haves

Experience taking industrial machinery through compliance, such as UL 508A, NFPA 79, NFPA 70 (NEC), IEC 60204-1, IEC 62061, or equivalent.
Experience designing safety circuits for robotic cells, including safety PLCs, safety-rated I/O, guarding, and interlocks, with working knowledge of ISO 13849 and robot cell safety standards ISO 10218 and ANSI/RIA R15.06.
Experience representing electrical design to customers or certification bodies.
Experience scaling machine builds from prototype to repeatable production.
Experience standardizing electrical components and BOMs across multiple machines while balancing cost, lead time, and obsolescence.
Experience with panel SCCR, short-circuit, and thermal calculations, including heat load and cooling.
Experience with servo drive commissioning and tuning, and motion control system integration.
Experience with facility electrical integration for machine installations, including utility planning, panel installation, cable management, and as-built turnover.
Experience designing test fixtures and data acquisition (DAQ) for instrumentation and validation.
PCBA layout experience using Altium, KiCad, or similar.
Experience selecting industrial connectors and cables, such as Harting, M12/M23 cordsets, and IPC.
KUKA or similar industrial robot controller integration experience.

Responsibilities

Own electrical design across the production cell and future platforms, including schematics, interconnect diagrams, panel layouts, and harness drawings released and revision-controlled in PDM.
Set reusable electrical architecture and documentation practices across platforms.
Define and govern change-controlled interfaces between robot controllers, PLC panels, end effectors, and instrumentation; make architecture, protection, and interface decisions affecting cost, schedule, and production readiness.
Perform, document, and establish practices for power distribution, grounding and bonding, and signal integrity analysis for 480VAC and 24VDC systems, drives, sensors, and I/O.
Partner with the controls and software team on I/O, safety logic, and industrial network architecture; the team owns PLC and robot programming.
Investigate complex and intermittent electrical issues across power, controls, and integration, and deliver root causes.
Own technical relationships with outsourced panel and harness suppliers, including release packages, deviation approvals, quality issue resolution, and preparing suppliers for repeatable production-volume builds.
Improve in-house panel and harness builds and establish build and inspection standards for both internal and supplier work.
Design and review PLC and control panels for manufacturability and serviceability.
Resolve persistent electrical problems, including those spanning disciplines, suppliers, and field installations.
Design and review custom PCBAs and instrumentation, and establish board-level review, bring-up, and production release practices.
Own the machine compliance approach for UL/IEC and machine safety requirements, and lead hardware through compliance.
Lead technical engagement with certification bodies and customers on electrical matters.
Anticipate systemic electrical and safety risks across programs and establish design reviews to prevent issues from reaching the factory floor.
Set electrical technical standards across the hardware team, including design standards, symbol libraries, and review checklists.
Lead electrical design reviews across Mechanical, Robotics, and Manufacturing, and mentor and develop engineers doing electrical work.