Electrical Design Engineer, Tactile Sensing

Mind Robotics; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Mind Robotics in Palo Alto is seeking an experienced engineer to lead the design of tactile sensor electronics, focusing on low-noise analog front-ends and signal processing for high-channel-count arrays.

The ideal candidate will have over 5 years in electronics design, exceptional analog intuition, and a collaborative spirit to work cross-functionally.

This role involves hands-on work, schematic capture, and debugging, contributing to innovative sensor technology.

Qualifications

• Exceptional intuition in analog and mixed-signal design.
• 5+ years designing sensor electronics; experienced with tactile or contact sensing modalities.
• Skilled in low-noise analog design and instrumentation amplifiers.

Responsibilities

• Own the tactile sensor stack electrically — from transducers to data delivery.
• Design low-noise analog front-ends for high-channel-count tactile arrays.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with teams to translate raw signals into usable data.

Skills

Analog and mixed-signal design intuition

Low-noise analog design skills

Schematic capture and PCB layout

Solid embedded systems fluency

Bench skills — oscilloscopes, LCR meters

Education

5+ years of experience in designing sensor electronics

Tools

Altium

Oscilloscopes

Embedded systems tools

Job description

Responsibilities

• Own the tactile sensor stack electrically — from transducer interface and analog front‑end through signal conditioning, digitization, and delivery of clean, time‑stamped data to downstream compute.

• Design low‑noise analog front‑ends for high‑channel‑count tactile arrays across one or more modalities (capacitive, resistive/piezoresistive, magnetic, optical, piezoelectric, MEMS/barometric), including amplification, filtering, ADC selection, and calibration strategy.

• Architect multiplexing and scanning schemes for dense taxel arrays, including crosstalk mitigation, drive/sense electrode design, and trade‑offs between spatial resolution, sample rate, and power.

• Design high‑density flex, rigid‑flex, and ultra‑compact PCBs for volume‑constrained, cable‑routed assemblies — fingertips, palms, gripper surfaces, and data collection gloves.

• Deliver deterministic, tightly synchronized sampling: design clocking, triggering, and timestamping architectures that meet sub‑millisecond synchronization requirements with the robot's real‑time actuator bus and ML data collection pipelines.

• Ensure EMI/ESD robustness — shielding, grounding, and filtering strategies for sensors operating millimeters from motors and power electronics in factory environments.

• Characterize sensor electrical performance — noise floor, SNR, bandwidth, drift, hysteresis, temperature sensitivity — and build the electrical side of characterization rigs alongside mechanical ground‑truth fixtures.

• Bring up boards hands‑on: schematic capture, layout review, first‑article debug, firmware‑adjacent driver and calibration work in collaboration with the firmware team.

• Contribute to DFM/DFA so sensor electronics scale from low‑volume prototypes to high‑volume production; work with PCB fabricators, assembly houses, and contract manufacturers to keep parts on spec and on time.

• Collaborate cross‑functionally with mechanical, firmware, controls, and ML teams to translate raw transducer signals into calibrated, usable manipulation feedback.

Qualifications

• Exceptional analog and mixed‑signal intuition. You understand noise sources, parasitics, and signal integrity instinctively.

• 5+ years of experience (or equivalent "hard tech" projects) designing sensor electronics, analog front‑ends, or high‑channel‑count data acquisition systems.

• Direct experience with the readout electronics of at least one tactile or contact sensing modality — capacitive, resistive, optical/vision‑based, magnetic, piezoelectric, MEMS, or barometric.

• Strong low‑noise analog design skills: instrumentation amplifiers, precision references, filter design, ADC architectures, and calibration techniques.

• High proficiency in schematic capture and PCB layout (Altium or similar), including high‑density flex and rigid‑flex design.

• Solid embedded systems fluency: SPI/I2C/UART and high‑speed serial interfaces, MCU selection and bring‑up, and enough firmware capability to debug your own boards.

• Strong bench skills — oscilloscopes, LCR meters, spectrum/network analyzers — and a hands‑on debugging approach with the ability to iterate quickly.

• Experience designing for volume manufacturing and working with PCB fabs, assembly houses, and contract manufacturers.

• You are comfortable with ambiguity, move fast, and have an "engineering curiosity" that drives you to understand how the entire system works, not just your part.

Bonus

• PhD or research experience in tactile sensing, electronic skin, neuromorphic/event‑based sensing, or contact‑rich manipulation.

• Experience with real‑time industrial communication buses (EtherCAT, CAN‑FD) and time synchronization protocols.

• Prior work instrumenting wearables or data collection gloves, including tethered high‑bandwidth acquisition systems.

• DSP or ML‑adjacent experience processing high‑rate sensor streams into features or training data.

• Prior work on humanoid hands, dexterous grippers, haptic devices, or prosthetics.