Hardware Engineer

Actor; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 175,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Actor, a deployment company for heavy machinery, seeks an engineer to design, build, and maintain the electrical systems on our autonomous machines. You will work on sensors, onboard compute, and wiring harnesses to survive dust, vibration, and weather.

You will own schematics, PCB layout, BOMs, and bring-up, integrating cameras, LiDAR, radar, GNSS, and IMUs, and connecting to CAN/J1939 for real-time data and commands. Expect rugged hardware that boots reliably in harsh environments.

Qualifications

• Shipped hardware that ran unattended in a harsh environment and can discuss failures and fixes.
• Hands-on with SPI, I2C, UART, Ethernet and the debugging tools to validate signals.
• Comfortable on an embedded Linux target and diagnosing problems from the command line.

Responsibilities

• Own electrical design end to end: schematics, PCB layout, BOM, bring-up, revisions.
• Integrate sensors (cameras, LiDAR, radar, GNSS, IMUs) and produce clean, time-synced data.
• Connect to CAN and J1939 to read vehicle state and issue commands.
• Bring up embedded Linux compute modules and ensure reliable boot after power/temperature swings.
• Design harnesses and enclosures that pass vibration and ingress testing.

Skills

Embedded systems

CAN/J1939

SPI/I2C/UART

Embedded Linux

Electronics design

Hardware debugging

Vibration/Ingress testing

Tools

Oscilloscopes

Logic analyzers

Multimeters

CAN tools

Job description

Actor is a deployment company. We build one model across every vertical of heavy machinery and deploy it for autonomy and safety.

Role:

You'll design, build, and maintain the electronics that go on our machines: the sensors, the onboard computer that reads them, and the wiring harnesses and mounts that hold it all together on equipment working in dust, vibration, and weather.

What you'll do

- Own electrical design end to end: schematics, PCB layout, BOM, bring-up, and revisions based on what breaks in the field.

- Integrate cameras, LiDAR, radar, GNSS, and IMUs, and get them producing clean, time-synced data.

- Connect to machine buses like CAN and J1939 to read vehicle state and send commands.

- Bring up embedded Linux compute modules and make them boot reliably after power cuts, thermal swings, and months unattended.

- Design harnesses and enclosures that pass vibration and ingress testing, and document them so a technician can install and replace them.

What you need

- You've shipped hardware that ran unattended in a harsh environment, and you can talk about what failed and how you fixed it.

- Hands-on with common embedded interfaces (SPI, I2C, UART, Ethernet) and the tools to debug them.

- Comfortable on an embedded Linux target and diagnosing problems from the command line.

- Nice to have: experience with vehicle networking or industrial equipment.

Compensation

• $175,000 to $250,000 base salary, plus equity.