Distinguished Hardware Development Engineer (Robotics)

Location: Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. Candidates must be eligible to work in the United States; visa sponsorship is not available.

Base pay: $230,000–$307,000 per year.

Company

hirify.global develops mobile robots and automation solutions for industrial applications and warehouse logistics.

What you will do

• Architect and evolve the Atlas physical platform, including robot configuration, module partitioning, and interfaces across actuation, structures, compute, power, sensing, and thermal subsystems.
• Maintain robot-level requirements, architectural baselines, interface definitions, CAD data, and mass, power, thermal, volume, cost, and reliability budgets.
• Lead system-level trade studies, architecture reviews, integration decisions, and risk resolution across mechanical, electrical, embedded, controls, software, manufacturing, and quality functions.
• Design experiments and analyses to measure hardware performance and turn test results into architectural and design decisions.
• Advise verification and validation planning, including FMEA, safety analysis, reliability strategies, and risk mitigation.
• Champion design for manufacturing and assembly, support scalable production and serviceability, and mentor engineers across disciplines.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechatronics, or a related technical discipline; a Master’s degree or PhD is preferred.
• At least 12 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree, 8 years with a Master’s degree, 5 years with a PhD, or equivalent experience.
• Broad expertise across mechanical, electrical, actuation, thermal, embedded, and controls disciplines, with the ability to evaluate subsystem trade-offs.
• Expert systems engineering practice covering requirements decomposition and traceability, interface control, budget allocation, trade studies, and verification and validation planning.
• Experience designing experiments and test campaigns for electromechanical systems and interpreting performance and field data.
• Deep understanding of robotics challenges including dynamic loads, power and thermal management, sensing and compute integration, environmental robustness, and system safety.
• Experience with hazard and risk analysis such as FMEA, FMECA, or FTA, and with relevant robotics regulatory and safety frameworks.
• Track record of taking a complex electromechanical product from concept through prototyping, validation, and high-volume production, including design for manufacture and assembly.
• Proficiency with system-level modeling and architectural documentation such as MBSE or SysML, plus CAD and analysis tools sufficient to review designs; strong communication, judgment, and mentoring skills are required.
• Recognized subject-matter expertise in robot or complex product architecture and proven technical leadership maturing an existing robotic or electromechanical product architecture.

Nice to have

• Experience contributing to clean-sheet product architecture.
• Experience with dynamic or legged robots, humanoids, or other high-DOF platforms.
• Master’s degree or PhD.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time position on the Atlas Humanoid Team.
• Principal individual-contributor role with cross-functional influence and responsibility for future-generation architectures.
• Base compensation is individualized based on internal equity, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.