Mechanical Engineer

Human Archive; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Human Archive is seeking a hands-on Mechanical/CAD engineer to lead the mechanical design of wearable capture hardware. You will own end-to-end mechanical work, from chassis and packaging to thermal management and manufacturability, with fast iteration and direct impact on real users.

Ideal candidates will have shipped wearable hardware, strong CAD skills, and proficiency in DFM, GD&T, and thermal/structural analysis. The role is based in San Francisco and requires on-site work.

Qualifications

• Hands-on mechanical CAD: SolidWorks, NX, Creo, or Fusion 360.
• Shipped consumer or wearable hardware to real users.
• DFM fluency across CNC, injection molding, and sheet metal.
• Tolerance stack-up and GD&T for precision optical systems.
• Structural and thermal FEA.

Responsibilities

• Mechanical architecture
• Optical mount and alignment
• Power and battery packaging
• Thermal management
• DFM and manufacturing handoff

Skills

Mechanical CAD

Shipped hardware

DFM across manufacturing

Tolerance stack-up/GD&T

Structural & thermal FEA

Job description

About Human Archive

Human Archive is a research lab backed by Y Combinator focused on modeling human embodied intelligence.

Humans are the most sophisticated biological systems we have ever observed, yet we still do not fully understand ourselves. Research into human physical intelligence — including the human hand, proprioception, and vision — remains largely unsolved. Our mission is to recover human embodied intelligence as a learned model. To achieve this, we build custom hardware products, deploy them globally at scale, and publish research. Today, our data is used for robotics and world modeling, but the broader opportunity is advancing scientific research into intelligence itself.

Founded by Stanford and UC Berkeley researchers, we are lean, deeply technical, and operate at extreme speed, taking on unglamorous and conventionally impossible problems that directly unlock step-function gains in model capability.

The deployment of capable humanoids at scale will permanently redefine human labor. Undesirable physical work will disappear, and human effort will shift toward a new era of abundant creativity.

We are building the infrastructure to accelerate that transition by assembling the Human Archive mafia. You will own meaningful systems from day one and see your work directly impact model capabilities. This is a once-in-a-generation inflection point. If you want to help reshape physical labor and work on problems that matter at civilizational scale, join us.
We’re hiring a mechanical / CAD engineer to lead the mechanical design of our wearable capture hardware. Hands-on work where physics, optics, manufacturing, and human factors all converge.

What you’ll work on

Mechanical architecture

• Chassis design across consumer-grade and production-grade materials
• Packaging, weight distribution, and human fit
• Serviceability and assembly architecture

Optical mount and alignment

• Camera and lens mounting systems for multi-camera arrays
• Tolerance stack-up against calibration accuracy targets
• Kinematic alignment systems and bonded inserts

Power and battery packaging

• Battery enclosures including swap mechanisms
• Connector layout and cable routing
• Drop and impact resistance

Thermal management

• Passive thermal dissipation in tight wearable form factors
• Heat spreader integration with chassis materials
• Touch-temperature constraints against the user

DFM and manufacturing handoff

• Design for CNC, injection molding, sheet metal, and composite layup
• Production drawings, GD&T, fixture design
• Tolerance verification and first-article inspection

Required technical experience

• Hands-on mechanical CAD: SolidWorks, NX, Creo, or Fusion 360
• Shipped consumer or wearable hardware to real users
• DFM fluency across CNC, injection molding, and sheet metal
• Tolerance stack-up and GD&T for precision optical systems
• Structural and thermal FEA

Strong plus

• Head-worn or body-worn product background (AR/VR, action cameras, sports tech, smart eyewear)
• Composite chassis design (carbon fiber, cyanate ester matrix)
• Multi-camera optical alignment
• Direct work with Asian ODMs and tooling shops
• Background in research-grade capture systems or medical wearables

About this role You own mechanical design end-to-end. The product surface is broad, the pace is fast, and your work ends up on real users within months. Compensation reflects the stage. The autonomy reflects it too.