Sr. Electronics Engineer, Actuators & Drives, Frontier AI & Robotics

Amazon • San Francisco, CA

8h

About The Position

Join Amazon's Frontier AI & Robotics team and take ownership of the electronics
that make our robots move. As a Sr./Staff Electronics Engineer, Actuators &
Drives, you will conceptualize, design, and test the motor drive electronics
that power our in-house robotic actuators—from the gate drivers and power stages
that command motor current to the sensing circuits and communication interfaces
that give our robots proprioceptive awareness. Your printed circuit board (PCB)
designs will live inside each of our next-generation robotic systems, directly
enabling the embodied intelligence that is central to FAR's mission.

Key job responsibilities
• Conceptualize, design, and validate motor drive electronics for in-house
robotic actuators, including inverter power stages, gate driver circuits,
current and position sensing, and power management subsystems from concept
through prototype and production
• Lead PCB-level design of compact, high-power-density motor drive boards,
including schematic capture, component selection, and collaboration with PCB
layout engineers to achieve signal integrity, thermal, and EMC requirements in
constrained actuator form factors
• Characterize and optimize inverter switching performance, efficiency, and
thermal behavior across the full operating envelope of FAR's actuator variants, using bench measurements and simulation to guide design decisions
• Define and implement current sensing architectures (shunt-based, Hall-effect,
or integrated IC-based) and position/velocity sensing interfaces (encoder,
resolver, Hall sensor) to support high-bandwidth FOC firmware on
microcontrollers and DSPs
• Partner with firmware engineers to define hardware-software interfaces for
motor drive control loops, fault detection logic, and communication protocols
(CAN, EtherCAT, SPI), ensuring electronics designs support the real-time control
requirements of robotic actuation
• Collaborate with motor design and mechanical engineers to specify the
electrical characteristics of custom BLDC and PMSM motors, align inverter design
to motor parameters, and validate the integrated actuator electro-mechanical
system
• Lead hardware bring-up, functional testing, and failure analysis for new
actuator electronics prototypes, developing test plans and characterization
setups that systematically validate design performance and identify failure
modes
• Define electronics design standards, review processes, and
design-for-manufacturability (DFM) guidelines for FAR's actuator drive
portfolio, and mentor junior engineers in motor drive electronics design best
practices

A day in the life
Your day centers on the full electronics development cycle for our custom
actuator drive systems. You might start by reviewing simulation results for a
new inverter topology, then transition to the lab to characterize switching
losses and thermal performance on a prototype motor drive board. Later in the
day, you could be collaborating with motor design engineers on back-EMF waveform
analysis, refining gate drive timing to optimize inverter efficiency, or working
with firmware engineers to define current sensing interfaces and hardware
abstraction layers.
Across the week, you'll be involved in schematic capture and PCB layout reviews
with your design team, participating in design review gates, and iterating on
hardware based on test findings. You'll navigate the challenge of fitting
high-performance drive electronics into compact, thermally constrained actuator
packages—designing for the power density, reliability, and robustness our robots
demand. Your work will span from concept and architecture through silicon
bring-up, and you'll play a key role in defining the electronics roadmap for
FAR's actuator portfolio.

About the team
Frontier AI & Robotics (FAR) is the team at Amazon building the next generation
of embodied intelligence. FAR drives the development and implementation of
advanced AI models within Amazon’s operations that enable robots to see, reason,
and act on the world around them, supporting a number of different warehouse
automation tasks.

Requirements

• Experience in developing functional specifications, design verification plans and functional test procedures
• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Power Electronics, or a closely related technical field
• 5+ years of professional experience in power electronics design, with demonstrated ownership of motor drive or power converter hardware from concept through prototype and test
• Expertise in inverter and motor drive circuit design, including MOSFET/IGBT selection, gate driver design, power stage layout, and thermal management for brushless DC or permanent magnet synchronous motor applications
• Experience with current sensing circuit design and PCB-level integration of position/velocity sensing interfaces for motor control applications
• Proficiency with electronics design tools including schematic capture and PCB layout (Altium, KiCad, Cadence, or similar) and SPICE-based circuit simulation
• Hands-on experience with power electronics lab characterization, including use of oscilloscopes, power analyzers, thermal cameras, and network analyzers for drive circuit validation

Nice To Haves

• Experience designing motor drive electronics for robotic actuators, collaborative robots, or other high-performance electromechanical systems where power density and dynamic performance are critical
• Familiarity with wide-bandgap semiconductor devices (GaN, SiC) and their application in compact, high-efficiency motor drive designs
• Experience with integrated gate driver ICs, isolated power supply design, and bootstrap circuitry for high-side switch control in half-bridge and full-bridge inverter topologies
• Knowledge of EMC design practices for motor drive electronics and experience achieving CE/FCC compliance in power conversion hardware
• Experience developing test automation and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) validation setups for motor drive electronics qualification
• Background working in fast-paced hardware development environments such as robotics companies, aerospace, or research institutions where rapid iteration and custom hardware are standard

Responsibilities

• Conceptualize, design, and validate motor drive electronics for in-house robotic actuators, including inverter power stages, gate driver circuits, current and position sensing, and power management subsystems from concept through prototype and production
• Lead PCB-level design of compact, high-power-density motor drive boards, including schematic capture, component selection, and collaboration with PCB layout engineers to achieve signal integrity, thermal, and EMC requirements in constrained actuator form factors
• Characterize and optimize inverter switching performance, efficiency, and thermal behavior across the full operating envelope of FAR's actuator variants, using bench measurements and simulation to guide design decisions
• Define and implement current sensing architectures (shunt-based, Hall-effect, or integrated IC-based) and position/velocity sensing interfaces (encoder, resolver, Hall sensor) to support high-bandwidth FOC firmware on microcontrollers and DSPs
• Partner with firmware engineers to define hardware-software interfaces for motor drive control loops, fault detection logic, and communication protocols (CAN, EtherCAT, SPI), ensuring electronics designs support the real-time control requirements of robotic actuation
• Collaborate with motor design and mechanical engineers to specify the electrical characteristics of custom BLDC and PMSM motors, align inverter design to motor parameters, and validate the integrated actuator electro-mechanical system
• Lead hardware bring-up, functional testing, and failure analysis for new actuator electronics prototypes, developing test plans and characterization setups that systematically validate design performance and identify failure modes
• Define electronics design standards, review processes, and design-for-manufacturability (DFM) guidelines for FAR's actuator drive portfolio, and mentor junior engineers in motor drive electronics design best practices

Benefits

• health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage)
• 401(k) matching
• paid time off
• parental leave

What This Job Offers

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