Founding Electrical Engineer - Power a Fleet of Cooperative Heavy-Lift RobotsLong Beach, California | On-site
Opportunity SummaryWe are hiring our first dedicated electrical engineer to own the electrical system on our flagship robotic vehicle. These tracked, autonomous machines work in teams of four to lift and carry very large payloads together, first across rough terrain here on Earth and eventually on the Moon. Today the focus is power distribution, power management, and wiring the robot with commercial off-the-shelf components, working hand in hand with our autonomy and mechatronics engineers.
A quarter-scale prototype is already running and a full-scale demonstrator is planned for early next year. You will join a small founding engineering team where everyone is their own technician, split your time between the bench and the field, and set the electrical architecture for every vehicle that follows. As the vehicles mature, this role grows into battery systems, custom boards, and flight computers built for harsh and space environments.
About UsWe are a pre-seed, venture-backed space infrastructure startup building the hardware needed for a permanent human presence beyond Earth, starting with heavy logistics and pressurized structures for the lunar surface. We closed our pre-seed round this spring, opened our first facility in the summer, and had a working quarter-scale prototype running within six weeks. Our founding team has designed and built launch vehicles, crewed spacecraft, landers, and space habitats at leading commercial space companies, and includes U.S. military experience. The cooperative robots we are developing for space also solve hard problems on Earth in defense, construction, and industrial logistics, and we are already in early partnership discussions with NASA and U.S. defense stakeholders.
Job Duties- Own the vehicle electrical system end to end, from power budgets and block diagrams through build, integration, and field test
- Design and build power distribution and power management for a vehicle that drives, lifts, and vibrates
- Build and route wiring harnesses by hand, choosing connectors, routing, and strain relief that hold up in real use
- Select, source, and integrate commercial off-the-shelf electrical components quickly
- Support the autonomy engineer on sensors, compute, actuators, and networking, and partner with mechatronics on the mechanical-electrical interface
- Lead hardware bring-up and root-cause debugging in the lab and the field, using a scope and first principles rather than swapping parts
- Manage grounding, shielding, and filtering, and track down interference the system creates on its own
- Contribute to battery packs and BMS, the charging interface, and the radios that keep vehicles in contact with each other and with operators
- Grow into custom PCBs and flight computers for future vehicles, including electronics for harsh and space environments
- Use frontier AI tools as part of your everyday design, build, and test workflow
Qualifications- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or a related field
- Hands-on electrical engineering experience on vehicles, robots, or other mobile hardware; early-career engineers and entry level candidates with strong build experience are encouraged to apply
- Power distribution, power management, and wiring harness experience for moving systems
- Comfortable doing your own technician work: crimping, stripping, soldering, and harness builds
- Familiarity with commercial off-the-shelf electrical components and how to source them
- Bring-up and debug skills with an oscilloscope and standard lab equipment
- Resourceful and self-directed, able to own the electrical system without a large team to lean on
- Based in or willing to relocate to the Long Beach area and work fully on-site
- U.S. person (U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual) as defined under ITAR
Preferred Experience- Battery pack and BMS design, including protection, charge management, and telemetry
- Schematic capture and PCB layout
- Electronics for space or other severe environments, including radiation-hardened design
- Custom flight computer or embedded avionics design
- Working EMC/EMI knowledge: grounding, shielding, filtering, and diagnosing self-generated interference
- RF work for mesh networks, including radio selection, antenna placement, and link budgets
- Distributed timing and synchronization, such as PTP (IEEE 1588)
- CAN and EtherCAT at the hardware and physical layer
- Safety-rated circuit design under ISO 13849 or a comparable functional safety standard
- High-current traction power or motor drive systems
- Time at a space, defense, motorsport, or other fast-iteration hardware company
- Early-stage startup experience
Why Join Us- Own the entire electrical system of a first-of-its-kind robot as a founding engineer
- Hardware is already running, so your work goes from the bench to field test quickly
- Grow from integrating off-the-shelf hardware today into designing custom flight electronics for the lunar surface
- Work directly with founders who have built and flown hardware at leading commercial space companies
- Dual-use technology with paths into lunar exploration, defense, and industrial logistics
- A small, hands-on team where ownership is shared and everyone pitches in beyond their own area
- Meaningful early-stage equity in a company with a long-term, mission-driven vision
Compensation Details$150,000 base salary + meaningful early-stage equity, with a planned salary increase at our next funding round
