Electrical Engineer (Automation & Controls)

Neuron Industries (YC S26); Gardena (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Daily catered lunch

Job summary

Neuron Industries in Torrance, CA is seeking an electrical and controls engineer to own the integration of our controller with real machines, including reference designs, panels, I/O, and the daily run of test cells.

You will serve as the design authority on hardware meeting the plant floor requirements, with Gardena as the home base and travel to customer sites for commissioning.

Qualifications

• Must have strong electrical fundamentals and the ability to size conductors, read motor curves, and troubleshoot analog noise.
• Have designed and physically built at least one real control system with panel, wiring, controller and running machine.
• Hands-on debugging at the machine using meters, scopes, and crimpers is routine.

Responsibilities

• Design the electrical side of deployments: schematics, panel layouts, wiring diagrams, BOMs for 24 VDC to 480 V loads.
• Build reference designs and internal test cells (motors, VFDs, pneumatics, sensors, safety circuits).
• Write controls application code for pilots and demos in our IDE and report bugs clearly.

Skills

Electrical fundamentals

Control system design

Hands-on debugging

Fieldbuses

VFDs

Sensors

Safety circuits

Tools

UL 508A knowledge

NFPA 79 experience

NEC experience

Job description

Own the electrical and controls engineering that connects our controller to real machines: reference designs, panels, I/O, and the test cells that prove the product.

But we cannot manufacture our abundant future while the reactors, fabs, and production lines that make everything we use still run on architecture locked in the 90s.

Neuron Industries is the industrial technology company for the AI era. We are rebuilding the entire industrial automation tech stack, from hardware to runtime to the AI fabric, without sacrificing a minute of uptime. Controls projects that took weeks now take hours.

Come help us build the golden age of American manufacturing.

The role

You own the electrical and controls engineering that connects our controller to real machines: reference designs, control panels, I/O architecture, and the test cells we run the product against every day. You're the design authority for how our hardware meets the plant floor. Home base is Torrance, CA, with travel to customer sites for commissioning.

What you'll do

• Design the electrical side of our deployments: schematics, panel layouts, wiring diagrams, BOMs. Everything from 24 VDC I/O up to 480 V three-phase motor loads, plus the field devices that hang off it — remote I/O, drives, safety relays, HMIs, sensors — across EtherCAT, EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, and Modbus.
• Build the reference designs and internal test cells (motors, VFDs, pneumatics, sensors, safety circuits) the software team runs against every day.
• Write controls application code for pilots and demos in our own IDE. You'll hit the rough edges before customers do, and your bug reports will be the best ones the product team gets.
• Commission systems at customer sites: point-to-point checkout, I/O validation, loop tuning, safety verification.
• Set our standards for schematics, panel builds (UL 508A), grounding, and shielding, and write them down well enough that the next engineer can just follow them.
• Work AI-first: AI every day for design calcs, schematic review, code, and docs, plus building the AI workflows that speed up controls engineering here.

What you'll bring

• Solid electrical fundamentals. You can size a conductor, spec protection, read a motor curve, and figure out where the noise on an analog input is coming from and how to make it go away.
• You've designed and physically built at least one real control system — panel, field wiring, controller, running machine — and you can explain why you made every choice in it.
• Comfortable with the industrial stack our controller lives in: fieldbuses, VFDs, sensors, safety circuits.
• Hands-on by default. You debug with a meter, a scope, and a crimper, standing at the machine.
• Bias to ship. You'd rather get the rig running this week and improve it than spec it for a quarter.
• You write clearly. Your schematics and docs end up being the reference everyone else builds from.
• AI-forward: you use AI daily in real engineering work and know where to trust it. A wrong wire gauge doesn't get a second chance.

Nice to have

• UL 508A / NFPA 79 / NEC experience; you've taken a panel through certification or an inspection.
• Machine safety design: risk assessments, ISO 13849 performance levels, safety circuit architecture.
• Motion control: servos, coordinated motion, EtherCAT drives.
• Time as an integrator or plant controls engineer. You know what 2 a.m. downtime feels like.

Compensation

$110,000–$170,000 base, plus meaningful early equity. The range is wide on purpose: where you land depends on how much of a real control system you have designed, built, and commissioned yourself.

• 100% employer-paid Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance (premium PPO and HMO options)
• Paid vacation, sick leave, and company holidays
• Free daily catered lunch and dinner

Neuron Industries is an equal opportunity employer: we hire on ability, hunger, and what you can build. And if this role excites you but your experience doesn't line up perfectly with every bullet above, apply anyway. The bullets describe the work, not the prerequisite for success.

Location:

Gardena, CA — on-site, plus travel to customer sites for commissioning.