Mechanical Design Structures Engineer

Socket.dev; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Rhoda AI in Mountain View, CA seeks a Structures Engineer to design the structural skeleton of the hand system—palms, fingers, linkages, and housings—capable of withstanding real-world abuse while maintaining precision for manipulation.

You will own design-for-manufacturing of structural parts from prototype through production and integrate thermal paths with actuators in dense packages, ensuring robustness and lightweight, body-safe structures for wearable devices.

Qualifications

• Experience designing structural parts for production components.
• Ability to integrate thermal paths with actuators in dense packages.
• Strong background in linkage, pivot and small-mechanism design.
• Proven track record of robust, impact-tolerant structures.
• Familiarity with GD&T and tolerance analysis is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design the structural architecture of the hand—palm, fingers, linkages, pivots.
• Own design-for-manufacturing of structural parts from prototype to production.
• Integrate thermal paths with actuation systems in dense packages.
• Engineer for robustness to tolerate impacts and real-world abuse.
• Ensure precision for fine motor control and repeatable grasping.
• Create lightweight, body-safe structures for wearable devices.

Skills

Die-cast & injection-mold design

Thermal design integration

Linkage & small-mechanism design

Design for volume production (DFM)

GD&T familiarity

Job description

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $450M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

Structures Engineer

You will design the structural skeleton of the hand system — the palms, fingers, linkages, and housings that must survive real-world abuse while holding the precision that fine manipulation demands.

What You’ll Do

• Design the structural architecture of the hand — palm, fingers, linkages, and pivots

• Own design-for-manufacturing of structural parts, including die-cast and injection-molded components, from prototype through production

• Integrate thermal paths with the actuation system so dense actuator packages stay within limits

• Engineer for robustness: the hand must tolerate impacts, drops, and sustained real-world abuse

• Hold the precision required for fine motor control and repeatable grasping

• Design lightweight, body-safe structures for wearable devices

What You Bring

• Experience with die-cast and injection-mold part design, including DFM for volume production

• Thermal design experience, especially integrating heat paths with actuators in dense packages

• Strong background in linkage, pivot, and small-mechanism design

• Proven ability to design robust systems that tolerate impact and sustained abuse

• Ability to design for precision where it matters, enabling fine motor control and reliable grasping

Nice to Have

• Experience with wearable or body-worn product structures

• Familiarity with GD&T and tolerance-stack analysis for small mechanisms