Member of Technical Staff - Robotics Hardware

Warp Sciences; San Francisco (CA); Sur place; USD 180 000 - 260 000; Plein temps

Résumé du poste

Warp Sciences is hiring a Member of Technical Staff, Robotics Hardware in San Francisco to build the physical infrastructure for autonomous science. You will design, prototype, test, and iterate robotics hardware for automated chemistry workflows.

You’ll work with chemists, AI researchers, software and hardware engineers to define scope, trade-offs, and timelines, while managing vendors and fabricators. This role emphasizes robustness, safety, and rapid learning.

Qualifications

• 7+ years cradle-to-grave hardware design experience across multiple engineering domains.
• Hands-on mechanical intuition and ability to work in the physical world.
• Proven track record delivering complex hardware projects that work in the real world.
• Strong debugging skills across electrical, mechanical, and software systems.
• Experience using digital and physical tools to accelerate work (FEA, CAD, 3D printing, etc.).
• Familiarity with electronics packaging and manufacturing methods.
• Ability to work across multidisciplinary teams and manage vendors.

Responsabilités

• Execute with speed and rigor, balancing learning velocity and execution velocity.
• Evaluate trade-offs with stakeholders across chemistry, AI, hardware, and software.
• Plan from a 10,000ft view, assess risk, and prioritize work accordingly.
• Design and build mechanisms, end effectors, workcells, and automation hardware.
• Build data collection systems for chemists in the lab.
• Manage vendors and external design resources when needed.
• Help define and foster a high-agency, high-performance engineering culture.

Connaissances

Hardware design

Mechanical intuition

System debugging

CAD and fabrication

Vendor management

Design for manufacturing

FMEA / safety

Electronics packaging

Startup experience

Outils

CAD software

3D printing

Laser cutting

Sheet metal bending

PCB design basics

Description du poste

At Warp Sciences, our mission is to help the world discover new medicines faster—and build the capacity to do it here in America. We bring AI, robotics, and life sciences together in automated labs that design, run, and learn from experiments, with each experiment making the next one better. We’re not developing drugs of our own. We’re building the infrastructure for the people who do.

Our systems combine AI, robotics, commercially available labware, and purpose-built machines to handle reagents and execute experiments with minimal human intervention.

We’re looking for a Member of Technical Staff, Robotics Hardware to help build the physical infrastructure of autonomous science. This is a highly multi-disciplinary role where you’ll work with chemists, AI researchers, software engineers, and other hardware engineers to identify and define high impact automation opportunities in the chemistry lab. You will be responsible for the design and implementation of these robotics and automation solutions from start to finish.

What You’ll Do

• Execute with speed and rigor. You know when to optimize for learning velocity vs. execution velocity, when to run a simulation vs. build a prototype, and when to use OTS hardware vs. build something custom.
• Effectively evaluate and communicate trade-offs. You will work with stakeholders across chemistry, AI, hardware, and software to define the appropriate scope for the robotic systems that you’ll design and own.
• Plan from a 10,000ft view. You will take initiative to understand the risk profile of the larger organization, and prioritize your work - and its scope - accordingly. Comfort with questioning assumptions and adopting a team mindset is critical.
• Design and build mechanisms, end effectors, workcells, and custom machines for automating scientific workflows.
• Build physical data collection systems for use by chemists in the lab.
• Manage vendors and leverage outside design resources when necessary, practical, or expedient.
• Help define the tone for a high agency high performance engineering culture.

What We’re Looking For

• 7+ years of cradle to grave hardware design experience, preferably across multiple engineering domains. Robotics specific experience is nice-to-have but not strictly necessary.
• Hands-on mechanical intuition. You are comfortable building and working in the physical world, and have a strong sense of what will work and what won’t.
• A demonstrated track record of making complex hardware projects come to life and work in the real world.
• Strong debugging skills with integrated electrical/mechanical/software systems.
• Exceptional ability to use digital and physical tools to accelerate your work and improve its quality. FEA, Claude/Codex, CAD, 3D printing, laser cutting, sheetmetal bending, mill, lathe, etc.
• Strong mechanical design and engineering fundamentals. Functional tolerance stackups, material properties, statics, dynamics, freebody diagrams, kinematic constraints, actuator selection/sizing, thermals, electronics packaging, etc.
• Experience managing and leveraging vendors. Your attention to detail will drive clear communication about costs, lead times, and bottlenecks, both internally and externally.
• Design for assembly and design for manufacturing fundamentals. Direct experience with various manufacturing methods and a sense of their strengths and limitations (CNC machining, sheetmetal, overmolding, casting, injection molding, etc.)
• High capacity for working in ambiguous environments and effectively adding structure when there’s not a clear path forward.

Especially Useful Experience

• Robotics specific hardware experience. Actuator selection/sizing/implementation, mechanism design, sensor selection and integration, communication protocol trade-offs, deep knowledge of OTS robotics hardware, firmware, etc.
• Knowledge of strengths and limitations of AI trained policies, traditional automation solutions, and experience factoring tasks and altering physical environments to make automation solutions successful.
• Demonstrated ability to integrate software learnings into hardware design, and hardware learnings into software architecture choices.
• Experience building hardware and/or software for physical AI data collection (tele-op, UMI, kinesthetic teaching, etc.)
• Experience building and managing data collection efforts
• Working knowledge of electronics and designing basic custom PCBs.
• Prior startup experience and an excitement for working on small teams.
• Experience with design for reliability and functional safety (FMEA, HIRA/HAZOP, etc)
• Accelerated lifecycle testing
• Organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, biotech experience, etc