Senior Solutions Design Engineer

Instrumental, Inc. • Palo Alto, CA

95d • $188,000 - $240,000

About The Position

Instrumental is hiring a Senior Solutions Design Engineer to develop custom hardware and software manufacturing solutions across varied customer applications, including AI infrastructure, networking equipment, consumer electronics, and defense. The role combines mechanical design, electronics manufacturing expertise, and direct customer collaboration to deliver solutions used on real production lines.

The engineer will own customer solutions end to end: understanding production processes and constraints, scoping technical tradeoffs with customer engineering teams, communicating with operations and business stakeholders, and designing deployments whose impact can be measured through cost, yield, and throughput. The work spans multiple projects and manufacturing environments rather than focusing on one product category.

Instrumental builds a manufacturing acceleration platform that captures production-line data and engineering context, including images, test logs, bills of materials, performance, and repair cycles. Its AI engines identify insights to help electronics companies improve manufacturing yield, throughput, and product ramp. The company says its platform is used by NVIDIA, Meta, Cisco, and their manufacturing partners.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in mechanical design, manufacturing engineering, product design, automation, test equipment, or a related discipline.
• Excellent communication skills and enthusiasm for working directly with customers.
• Experience on high-volume electronics or NPI manufacturing floors, with an understanding of production workflows, line constraints, and the transition from NPI to mass production.
• Strong CAD skills using SolidWorks, Creo, NX, or similar tools.
• Fluency in design for manufacturing (DFM), tolerance analysis, and mechanical design tradeoffs.
• A builder's mindset and ability to solve ambiguous problems.
• Willingness to travel occasionally to customer sites.

Nice To Haves

• Startup experience or a track record of driving initiatives independently.
• Experience in high-volume consumer electronics.
• Experience in robotics or automation.
• Experience in AI server or networking hardware.
• Experience in optical systems or machine vision.

Responsibilities

• Partner with customer engineering, manufacturing, and operations teams to understand production processes, technical requirements, and constraints.
• Architect end-to-end inspection solutions, including determining where Instrumental stations should be placed in production lines to maximize coverage, throughput, and business impact.
• Lead technical customer engagements throughout the customer lifecycle, balancing cycle time, manufacturability, ergonomics, cost, and inspection coverage.
• Work closely with Sales, Product, Hardware, Software, and Customer Success.
• Define production-ready deployment solutions, including station placement, imaging strategy, mechanical fixtures, optics, and lighting, and ensure they integrate into high-volume production lines.
• Understand how customers use images, test results, bills of materials, and production records, and incorporate that data into solutions that improve visibility and accelerate on-floor decisions.

Benefits

• Health insurance
• Vision insurance
• Dental insurance
• Public transit and commuter plans
• Maternity and paternity leave

What This Job Offers

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