Senior Electrical / Embedded Robotics Engineer
Duration: 3 months initially, extendable on quarterly terms
Client will make the hiring decision but one and done interviews
Location: Palo Alto, CA preferred, but open to Dearborn, MI or remote
+ Periodic travel will be required for design reviews, prototype bring-up, hardware integration, and testing.
Project Overview
Client is seeking a Senior Electrical / Embedded Systems Engineer to support the development of a reusable electrical and embedded architecture for an advanced robotics platform. The project involves building a complex bi-manual mobile robot from the ground up while creating scalable hardware standards that can be reused across future robot configurations.
This engineer will work alongside customer hardware, embedded, and robotics engineers to deliver system-level electrical architecture, power and communications designs, custom electronics, manufacturing-ready wiring harnesses, and validated hardware integration.
Because this is a physical robotics project, candidates must be comfortable working directly with prototype hardware.
Responsibilities
- Translate robot-level requirements into electrical, power, communications, embedded-controller, and wiring architectures.
- Develop system power budgets covering continuous loads, peak loads, inrush current, conversion losses, and fault conditions.
- Select power supplies, converters, protection devices, controllers, sensors, connectors, cables, and related components.
- Design and review electrical schematics, PCB layouts, bills of materials, and fabrication packages.
- Identify opportunities for custom electronics and determine when qualified commercial components are the better solution.
- Design robot wiring harnesses, including schematics, wire lists, connector schedules, drawings, labeling, grounding, shielding, and routing requirements.
- Coordinate with PCB fabricators, contract manufacturers, and harness suppliers through prototype and first-article builds.
- Define communications interfaces using technologies such as CAN FD, EtherCAT, Ethernet, SPI, I C, UART, or RS-485.
- Collaborate with embedded engineers on firmware requirements for power sequencing, monitoring, diagnostics, telemetry, fault handling, bootloaders, and field updates.
- Support ROS 2 device and hardware-abstraction integration.
- Lead or support prototype board bring-up, robot power-up, communications bring-up, and system troubleshooting.
- Develop bench, hardware-in-the-loop, integration, and fault-injection tests.
- Produce editable engineering documentation, interface-control documents, test evidence, and design-decision records.
- Transfer technical knowledge so customer engineers can reproduce, modify, and extend the delivered solution.
The project s expected disciplines include power electronics, PCB design, embedded firmware architecture, real-time control, cable and harness design, ROS 2 integration, and test engineering.
Required Qualifications
- Senior-level experience in electrical engineering, embedded hardware, mechatronics, robotics, or a related field.
- Demonstrated ownership of electrical systems for complex electromechanical products.
- Strong circuit-design, schematic-capture, and PCB-development experience.
- Experience with power conversion, distribution, switching, sequencing, monitoring, and circuit protection.
- System-level component-selection and design-tradeoff experience.
- Hands-on wiring-harness design experience, including manufacturing documentation and supplier coordination.
- Practical knowledge of microcontrollers, embedded firmware interfaces, and real-time hardware behavior.
- Experience with embedded communications protocols and physical device integration.
- Proficiency using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, current probes, electronic loads, multimeters, or comparable laboratory equipment.
- Experience bringing up and troubleshooting prototype electronics and integrated hardware.
- Ability to work independently and make sound engineering decisions in a lean, fast-moving project environment.
- Willingness to travel periodically for hands-on access to robot hardware.
Preferred Qualifications
- Robotics, autonomous systems, advanced manufacturing, automotive, or industrial automation experience.
- Experience developing a robot or complex machine from an early prototype or clean-sheet stage.
- Experience designing custom embedded controllers, carrier boards, or power-management electronics.
- Familiarity with CAN FD, EtherCAT, ROS 2, hardware-abstraction layers, and Linux-based robot compute environments.
- Experience with bootloaders, field firmware updates, watchdogs, telemetry, diagnostics, and device-version management.
- Experience with hardware-in-the-loop testing and automated embedded validation.
- Familiarity with IPC-2221, IPC-2152, IPC-A-610, IPC/WHMA-A-620, IEC 60204-1, or NFPA 79.
- Experience designing for grounding, shielding, EMC, serviceability, and high-current electromechanical loads.
