Job title: Robotics Hardware Engineering Team Lead
Location: San Francisco, CA
Duration: Full-time
The Role
As a Hardware Engineering Team Lead for Dexterous Hand, you will lead the team that designs and delivers the hands of our humanoids. You will own the hardware stack end-to-end, from actuator and joint architecture through structure, sensing, cabling, and integration, working with controls, firmware, ML, and product to turn capability targets into hardware that performs reliably in the real world.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will set direction for the team while staying close to the bench, making the hard tradeoffs that define an end effector platform: torque density versus thermal limits, dexterity versus durability, sensor fidelity versus serviceability. You will grow up with a small team of strong engineers, set up the technical bar for the subsystem, and be accountable for what the robot can pick up, hold, and do in the field.
Responsibilities and Duties
- Lead the hand hardware team, setting technical direction across arms, wrists, hands, and end-effectors, and growing the team through hiring, mentoring, and clear engineering standards.
- Own the architecture of the hand, including actuator selection and integration, joint design, structural elements, transmission, cabling, and sensing.
- Drive subsystems from concept through detailed design, prototyping, validation, and release to production, with an eye towards performance, durability, manufacturability, and cost.
- Define and execute test plans that characterize payload, precision, repeatability, backlash, thermal behavior, fatigue life, and field robustness, and translate results into design improvements.
- Partner deeply with controls, firmware, and ML to co-design mechatronic subsystems where mechanical, electrical, and software boundaries are tightly coupled.
- Work with internal machinists and external suppliers on fabrication, sourcing, and process development, and own design for manufacture and assembly for the subsystem.
- Set the technical bar for the team through design reviews, documentation standards, and a culture that values rigor, speed, and learning from real hardware.
- Be accountable for the capability outcomes of the hand, including what the robot can grasp, manipulate, and sustain in operational environments.
Qualifications and Skills
- Strong fundamentals in mechanical and mechatronic engineering, including mechanics of materials, dynamics, machine design, GD&T, and the judgment to apply them under real-world constraints.
- Proven track record designing and shipping precision mechatronic hardware in robotics, surgical, aerospace, automotive, or comparably demanding domains.
- Direct experience with high-performance actuators (BLDC paired with planetary, harmonic, or cycloidal drives) and the joint-level integration that surrounds them.
- Demonstrated technical leadership: you have led or mentored engineers, owned multi-person efforts, and set direction for a subsystem or team.
- Fluency in a modern parametric CAD tool (NX, SolidWorks, Creo, or similar) and comfort with hand calcs and FEA where appropriate.
- Hands-on shop skills. You have turned your own parts, debugged your own prototypes, and are comfortable across mechanical, electrical, and firmware boundaries when the problem demands it.
- Systems judgment to navigate the core tradeoffs of hand hardware: torque density, thermal limits, mass and inertia, stiffness, sensing fidelity, durability, and serviceability.
- A bias toward shipping, paired with the discipline to test rigorously before you do.
Bonus Qualifications
- Direct experience with humanoid platforms, robotic arms, dexterous hands and end-effectors.
- Familiarity with tactile sensing, force and torque sensing, or integrated joint sensing architectures.
- Experience with structural composites, sheet metal design, or low-volume manufacturing processes.
- Comfort writing Python or similar for test automation, characterization, and data analysis.
- History of taking a subsystem from prototype to deployed product at scale.
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