Mechanical Engineer (AI)

Location: Work in person at the NYC headquarters when not traveling; domestic and international travel up to 25%. Offices are also listed in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Salary: $175,000–$210,000 per year, plus equity and benefits.

Company

Arena Physica develops Atlas, an AI platform that uses physics-grounded intelligence to verify, debug, and optimize hardware across its lifecycle.

What you will do

• Break mechanical workflows into datasets for evaluations, reinforcement learning, and model training across the hardware lifecycle.
• Define scoring and judging methodologies for evaluating language models on mechanical engineering work.
• Automate expert workflows for geometry cleanup, meshing, convergence studies, boundary conditions, load cases, material models, and design-of-experiments sweeps.
• Lead private evaluations with partner companies and convert past designs and failure cases into measurable evaluations.
• Develop production-grade structural, thermal, and dynamic analysis workflows for Atlas using CAD and FEA tools.
• Support forward-deployed engineering, diagnose real hardware issues, and represent Arena with engineering partners and the broader mechanical engineering community.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional mechanical design experience in aerospace, defense, robotics, consumer electronics, automotive, energy, or a related field, including taking designs through production.
• Proficiency with at least one major CAD tool such as SolidWorks, NX, Creo, CATIA, Onshape, or Fusion.
• Experience with FEA for structural and thermal problems using tools such as Ansys, Abaqus, Nastran, COMSOL, or CalculiX, with the ability to validate results using hand calculations.
• Knowledge of GD&T, tolerance stack-ups, DFM/DFA, material selection, fasteners, joints, and common manufacturing processes.
• Python proficiency for scripting analysis checks and parsing CAD and simulation outputs.
• Clear technical writing and the ability to define precise engineering criteria.

Nice to have

• Experience with scriptable or open-source CAD tools such as FreeCAD, CadQuery, or build123d.
• Exposure to AI, training data, reward signals, grading rubrics, reinforcement learning, or LLM benchmarking for engineering tasks.

Culture & Benefits

• In-person work at the NYC headquarters when not traveling.
• Relocation support provided.
• 100% of monthly medical, vision, and dental insurance premiums covered for employees and dependents.
• 401(k) retirement plan and unlimited PTO.
• Daily lunch from local restaurants through Sharebite.

Hiring process

• Employment may be conditioned on authorization to receive software or technology controlled under U.S. export control laws without sponsorship for an export license.