Mechanical Design Engineer, Wearables

Mind Robotics; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Mind Robotics is developing Physical AI wearables for factory deployment. We seek a hands-on mechanical lead to own the architecture across head-worn and body-worn devices, guiding budgets, tolerances, and tooling decisions. You will drive tradeoffs between optics, electronics, and structure, ensuring robust, scalable platforms.

You will work in a fast-moving environment, mentoring the team, defining standards, and staying hands-on with prototype testing and validation across real users.

Qualifications

• Exceptional mechanical intuition and understanding of forces, materials and mechanisms.
• End-to-end ownership of the mechanical architecture for shipped wearables or handheld devices.
• Experience packaging cameras, sensors, compute and batteries into compact enclosures with tight tolerances.
• Hands-on expertise with injection molding and polymer selection from design to tooling and production.

Responsibilities

• Own the mechanical architecture across head-worn and body-worn devices, including legacy and generations to come.
• Set mechanical requirements for optics, electrical, and compute teams and manage tradeoffs between budgets.
• Decide which mechanical problems to tackle in each device generation and enforce scope boundaries.
• Own build and tooling strategy for the platform and relationships with molders and contract manufacturers.
• Establish mechanical standards for design reviews, tolerance analyses, materials, and vendor kvalifications.
• Stay hands-on: build, test, and break prototypes; perform tolerance, structural, drop, and thermal analyses.
• Grow the mechanical bench through design reviews, mentoring, and hiring.

Skills

Mechanical intuition

Wearable architecture experience

Systems tradeoffs

Injection molding know-how

Soft goods & textiles

CAD proficiency

Ambiguity tolerance

Tools

SolidWorks

Catia

NX

Job description

About Mind

Mind Robotics is building Physical AI for real-world industrial deployment, starting with the factory floor. We believe the hardest problems in AI are solved when researchers and engineers are hands-on with the physical world every day - and we're looking for people who are passionate about robotics, value ownership, and are excited to tackle difficult problems. Join us if you want to move beyond digital intelligence and put intelligence into motion.

About Mind

Mind Robotics is building Physical AI for real-world industrial deployment, starting with the factory floor. We believe the hardest problems in AI are solved when researchers and engineers are hands-on with the physical world every day - and we're looking for people who are passionate about robotics, value ownership, and are excited to tackle difficult problems. Join us if you want to move beyond digital intelligence and put intelligence into motion.

Responsibilities

• Own the mechanical architecture of Mind's wearable data collection platform across both head-worn and body-worn devices, including what carries forward between generations and what gets rebuilt.
• Set the mechanical requirements the optics, electrical, and compute teams design against: volume and keep-out budgets, alignment and stiffness targets, thermal limits, and mass allocation. Own the tradeoffs when those budgets conflict, and decide which ones give.
• Decide which mechanical problems each device generation takes on and which it deliberately does not, and hold that line when the program pushes back.
• Own build and tooling strategy for the platform: what is printed, machined, molded, or bought; when tooling gets committed; and which molders, soft goods vendors, and CMs Mind builds a long-term relationship with.
• Set the mechanical standards other hardware teams work to: design review, tolerance analysis practice, materials and skin-contact qualification, and DFM expectations for vendors.
• Stay hands-on. Build, test, and break prototypes on real users, and personally run the tolerance, structural, drop, and thermal analyses that decide the architecture.
• Grow the mechanical bench through design review, mentorship on the wearable stack, and hiring.

Qualifications

• Exceptional mechanical intuition. You understand how forces, materials, and mechanisms behave instinctively.
• You have owned the mechanical architecture of a shipped wearable, head-worn, or handheld consumer device end to end, and can describe both the tradeoffs you chose and the ones you refused.
• Depth packaging cameras, sensors, compute, and batteries into space-constrained enclosures with tight tolerance and alignment requirements, with a track record of setting those budgets rather than working inside someone else's.
• Deep hands-on knowledge of injection molding and polymer selection, from part design through tooling and T1 to production, including judgment on when to commit tooling.
• Working fluency in soft goods and textiles: straps, padding, fabric-to-rigid interfaces, and skin-contact ergonomics. You know when this needs a specialist and can direct one.
• High proficiency in SolidWorks, Catia, NX, or similar CAD tools, including surfacing.
• Comfortable with ambiguity, moves fast, and curious about how the whole system works.