Mechanical Engineer

LMK Recruiting Solutions; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Early-stage equity

Direct impact

Small team, no bureaucracy

Health, 401(k)

Job summary

LMK Recruiting Solutions is helping a robotics healthcare client fill a hands-on Mechanical Engineer role in San Francisco. You will design, build, and test mechanisms for pharmaceutical hardware, taking parts from sketch to bench and beyond, with direct ownership early.

You will work with senior engineers, own hardware early, iterate fast from first principles, and grow toward production design, including CAD, DFx, and collaboration with electrical/software teams.

Qualifications

• Portfolio of hardware you designed and physically made.
• Working command of statics, dynamics, mechanics of materials, and machine design.
• Ability to defend material choices and tolerances.
• Hands-on fabrication with 3D printers, shop tools, and basic machining.
• CAD drawings ready for production.

Responsibilities

• Design, fabricate, and assemble prototype mechanisms, fixtures, and test rigs yourself.
• Use rapid fabrication methods: 3D printing, laser cutting, machining, or hand tools.
• Assemble, debug, and rework hardware on the bench with technicians.
• Run short loops and iterate quickly to learn and improve.
• Create CAD parts and release drawings for shop production.
• Collaborate with suppliers on DFx for machined, molded, sheet metal parts.
• Work with electrical and software engineers to integrate motors, sensors, and harnesses.
• Help carry designs from prototype toward reliable production.

Skills

Builder first

0-3 years exp

First-principles

Engineering judgment

Hands-on fabrication

CAD proficiency

Ownership

Tools

OnShape

SolidWorks

Creo

Job description

As a Mechanical Engineer, you'll design, build, and test the mechanisms inside our client's robotic pharmacy. This is a hands-on role. You'll take parts and subassemblies from a sketch and a hand calculation to hardware running on the bench, then break it, learn from it, and build the next one.

They're looking for people who build things, and who can explain from first principles why their design works. If you can draw the free-body diagram, estimate the answer before you open the simulation, and then go make the part yourself, please reach out.

You’ll work side by side with senior engineers who own the system architecture. You’ll own real hardware early, and your scope will grow as fast as your judgment does.

What makes this role extraordinary:

Your hardware will handle real medication for real patients. Few early-career roles let you design a mechanism, build it with your own hands, watch it fail, fix it, and see it go into a product headed for nationwide deployment.

What You’ll Do

Build and Iterate

• Design, fabricate, and assemble prototype mechanisms, fixtures, and test rigs yourself
• Use the fastest method that answers the question: 3D printing, laser cutting, manual and CNC machining, or hand tools
• Assemble, debug, and rework hardware on the bench alongside our technicians
• Run short loops: build something, learn from it, and improve it in days, not months

Engineering Judgment from First Principles

• Start every design with a sketch, a free-body diagram, and a hand calculation before CAD or simulation
• Size springs, motors, bearings, shafts, and fasteners from loads, energy, and duty cycle
• Choose materials and finishes for stated reasons: strength, stiffness, wear, fatigue, and cost
• Run tolerance stack-ups on the interfaces that matter, and know which ones those are
• State your assumptions, decide what is good enough, and check your prediction against the hardware

Test and Learn

• Write simple test plans, instrument your builds, and collect data you trust
• Compare results to your calculations and explain the gap
• Find the root cause when something breaks, not just the patch
• Record what you learned so the next engineer can build on it

Grow into Production Design

• Create parts in CAD and release drawings a shop can build from
• Learn design for manufacturing (DFM) by working with senior engineers and our suppliers on machined, molded, and sheet metal parts
• Work with electrical and software engineers to integrate motors, sensors, and harnesses
• Help carry designs from prototype toward systems that run reliably 24/7 in a pharmacy

What Our Client Is Looking For

Our client’s don't care about your degrees. They care about what you can show! Send your portfolio, with photos and videos of things you built, including the ones that failed and what you changed.

Required

• Builder first: A portfolio of hardware you designed and physically made. Project teams, internships, research, and personal projects all count.
• 0-3 years of hands-on mechanical or mechatronic engineering experience, in industry or out of it.
• First-principles fundamentals: Working command of statics, dynamics, mechanics of materials, and machine design. You can go from a sketch to a free-body diagram to a number, and defend the number.
• Engineering judgment: You can explain why you chose a material, a mechanism, or a tolerance, and what you traded away to get it.
• Hands-on fabrication: Comfortable in a shop with 3D printers, hand tools, and basic machining. You debug with a caliper and a multimeter, not just a screen.
• CAD proficiency: Solid part and assembly modeling in a 3D CAD platform (OnShape, SolidWorks, Creo), and drawings clear enough to build from.
• Ownership: You finish what you start, say what you don’t know, and learn fast from feedback.

Nice to Have

• Mechanisms with moving parts: linkages, cams, gear trains, linear stages, grippers, dispensers
• Mechatronics basics: motors, sensors, and a microcontroller you wired and programmed yourself
• Tolerance analysis and GD&T on parts that had to fit and function
• Exposure to manufacturing methods such as machining, injection molding, sheet metal, or casting
• Python or MATLAB for test data and quick calculations
• Simulation (FEA) used to check a hand calculation, not replace it

How We Hire

• Hiring Manager Interview (60 min): walk us through something you built
• Embedded Technical Interview (60 min): work a design problem from first principles
• Leadership Interview (60 min)

What We Offer

• Early-stage equity in automated pharmacy dispensing at scale
• Direct impact: your hardware dispenses medication to real patients
• Small team, zero bureaucracy, high trust
• Hard problems: precision mechanisms, high-reliability hardware, regulatory compliance, and real-time hardware integration
• Meaningful early-stage equity
• Health, 401(k)

Why Join Now?

Impact & Growth

• Direct Patient Impact: Your hardware will improve healthcare outcomes for millions of patients
• Market Leadership: Ground‑floor opportunity to define an entirely new category of healthcare technology
• Technical Innovation: Work on novel problems at the intersection of AI, robotics, and healthcare
• Career Acceleration: Real ownership early, with scope that grows as the company scales

Team and Culture

• World-Class Team: Learn alongside exceptional engineers, AI researchers, and healthcare experts
• Direct Access: Work directly with the co-founders, with real autonomy and genuine influence over decisions
• Innovation Focus: Culture that prioritizes breakthrough thinking and rapid experimentation
• Mission-Driven: Team united around the goal of transforming healthcare through technology

Values

• Servant Leadership: Make those around you better
• Do the Hard Things: Healthcare, hardware, and company-building are all hard. They do them anyway. Convenience for them is life-changing for those they serve
• Own Your Work: Be accountable. Take pride in your output. We live and die by what you do. Own it fully
• Default is Now: There's no better time than today. Default to action. What can be proved, learned, or simplified right now