Senior/Staff Closures Engineer (Automotive)

Location: Foster City, California, United States; Workplace: On-site

Company

Zoox develops fully autonomous vehicles and the supporting mobility-as-a-service ecosystem, combining robotics, machine learning, and vehicle design.

What you will do

• Own the complete vehicle closures system as the technical lead and subject matter expert.
• Define and defend closures architecture, including mechanism topology, load paths, sealing, water management, actuation, state detection, tolerances, and hardware-firmware interfaces.
• Own requirements, integration strategy, testing flow, and design standards from component through full-vehicle validation.
• Design critical latches, hinges, actuators, seals, glazing interfaces, and related mechanisms from concept through sourcing, tooling, PPAP, validation, and launch.
• Release production-quality CAD and drawings with GD&T, and perform structural, FEA, mechanism, and mechatronic analyses.
• Lead root-cause analysis, cross-functional projects, supplier technical discussions, and mentoring for engineers working in closures.

Requirements

• BS in Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Mechatronics, or a related field.
• 10+ years of mechanical engineering experience, or 8+ years with an advanced degree, focused on automotive closures, complex mechanisms, or robotics.
• Architecture-level ownership of a closures system or similarly complex integrated vehicle system, including requirements, integration, and trade-offs.
• Experience taking closure systems or complex mechanisms through design, sourcing, validation, and mass-production launch.
• Expert 3D CAD skills, preferably CATIA 3D, with the ability to release production-quality parts.
• Strong expertise in automated doors, liftgates, trunks, decklids, charge-port mechanisms, kinematic synthesis, load-path design, DFM, GD&T, dimensional engineering, and manufacturing processes.

Nice to have

• MATLAB/Simulink experience for mechanical system modeling and closed-loop control.
• Electronics fundamentals, including ECUs, sensor selection, CAN bus, and electrical debugging.
• Experience with FEA and feasibility tools such as InspireForm or InspireCast.
• Transit, commercial, or fleet vehicle experience involving high-cycle closures.
• Experience with seal design, water management, wind noise, or door-closing effort.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on fully autonomous vehicles and high-duty-cycle automated closures.
• Collaborate across body, electrical engineering, firmware, CAE, manufacturing, quality, and service functions.
• Contribute to design processes and standards intended to support multiple vehicle programs.
• Zoox values diverse perspectives and a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.