CAE Engineer (Robotics)

Location: Palo Alto, United States; on-site

Company

hirify.global develops Physical AI and robotics systems for real-world industrial deployment, starting with factory-floor applications.

What you will do

• Own structural CAE for robot arms, torso, base, and end effectors from concept through production validation.
• Build and analyze component-level and full-system finite element models for static strength, stiffness, deflection, contact, bolted joints, and buckling.
• Perform modal, frequency-response, transient, shock, and impact analyses for locomotion and manipulation scenarios.
• Use multibody dynamics to derive structural load cases from duty cycles, static holds, and fault conditions for FEA and fatigue analysis.
• Own arm and torso stiffness budgets, predicting tip deflection and torsional compliance effects on end-effector positioning accuracy.
• Correlate models with strain-gauge, accelerometer, and modal-test data while establishing CAE standards and load-case libraries.

Requirements

• 5+ years of structural FEA experience on complex electromechanical systems or equivalent hard-tech projects.
• Strong fundamentals in stress, strain, structural dynamics, and vibration, with the ability to validate models using hand calculations.
• Proficiency with linear and nonlinear static, dynamic, and modal simulation using Abaqus, Ansys, OptiStruct/HyperWorks, Nastran, or LS-DYNA.
• Experience with multibody dynamics tools such as Adams or Simpack and scripting in Python or MATLAB.
• Experience correlating finite element models with physical test data and driving design changes from results.
• Hands-on problem-solving skills, comfort with ambiguity, and curiosity about complete robotic systems.

Nice to have

• Experience in robotics, humanoids, EV structures, aerospace, or other mass- and stiffness-critical systems.
• Fatigue and durability tooling such as FE-Safe or nCode DesignLife, or transmission and strain-wave gearing analysis.
• Experience with topology optimization, surrogate modeling, or large-scale DOE.
• PhD or research experience in structural mechanics or dynamics.

Culture & Benefits

• Hands-on engineering focused on bringing intelligence into physical systems.
• Ownership of difficult, system-level robotics problems from early concepts through production.
• Fast iteration and practical problem-solving in a hardware engineering environment.