Senior Electrical Engineer, Embedded Hardware

Our first research frontier is self-preservation: the base case of physical self-replication. Our machines will survive, coordinate, and recover without humans. We believe scalable machine labor requires more than single-agent task generality or machines shaped in our image.

About the role

You will own the low-voltage electrical architecture and embedded hardware connecting sensing, computation, communications, and control. The work spans electrical integration of sensors and compute, mixed-signal interfaces, network physical layers, custom interface and controller boards, connectors, harness drawings, grounding, shielding, electromagnetic compatibility, and board bring-up under real switching, vibration, and configuration changes.

Success means a released electrical system with measured signal integrity, timing, compatibility, and fault behavior across representative loads, vibration, environmental exposure, and configuration changes.

What you will do

• Translate sensing, compute, communications, calibration, diagnostic, environmental, and fault requirements into electrical architectures, interface specifications, signal budgets, and verification plans.
• Define and verify electrical interfaces for cameras, inertial sensors, encoders, force or torque sensors, ranging sensors, embedded compute, timing devices, and communication components against measured system requirements.
• Design and release mixed-signal, digital, sensor-interface, communication, power-sequencing, and controller-support circuitry with controlled schematics, PCB layouts, bills of material, and revision history.
• Own connector selection, pinouts, cable and harness drawings, shielding, grounding, separation, derating, strain relief, service loops, continuity requirements, and electrical acceptance criteria.
• Bring up boards, sensors, compute, and networks using oscilloscopes, logic and bus analyzers, spectrum or network instrumentation, programmable supplies, thermal measurements, and automated acquisition.
• Characterize signal integrity, noise, clock and time-distribution behavior, communication margin, startup and brownout behavior, grounding, emissions susceptibility, and injected faults on representative assemblies.
• Carry embedded hardware through design review, supplier fabrication, inspection, assembly, programming support, calibration, machine integration, manufacturing test, nonconformance closure, and verified release.

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Released and brought up embedded electronics for a robot, vehicle, instrument, industrial machine, or comparable electromechanical product using controlled schematics, PCB layouts, bills of material, and revisions.
• Designed mixed-signal or digital interfaces involving sensors, embedded compute, clocks, converters, communication physical layers, protection, filtering, and power sequencing.
• Produced connector pinouts and cable or harness documentation, then verified continuity, grounding, shielding, signal integrity, communication margin, or electromagnetic performance on assembled hardware.
• Closed an electrical integration failure by reproducing it with bench instrumentation, identifying the physical or circuit-level root cause, releasing a correction, and demonstrating the fix through repeated test.

Preferred experience

• Robotics sensors, embedded compute, CAN, EtherCAT, Ethernet, MIPI, USB, LVDS, precision analog acquisition, or distributed time synchronization.
• High-reliability harnessing, grounding and shielding, EMI or EMC testing, environmental qualification, or electrically noisy motion systems.
• Hardware-in-the-loop systems, production programming and calibration, automated board test, supplier technical review, or low-volume complex electromechanical builds.

The annual base salary range for this Palo Alto position is $150,000â??$190,000. Health coverage, benefits, and generous equity come with the role. This role is on-site in Palo Alto. A relocation bonus is available. We hire to start as soon as possible. We review what you’ve shipped; if it’s the caliber we seek, interviews take about a week, start to finish. We treat your work and conversations with discretion.