Principal Solutions Architect

instrumental-inc-; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Instrumental seeks a Principal Solutions Design Engineer to work across AI infrastructure, networking, consumer electronics, and defense. You’ll own end-to-end solutions from scoping to on-floor deployment.

You’ll blend mechanical design, electronics manufacturing, and direct customer collaboration to build production-ready hardware and software solutions. Bay Area compensation ranges $210,000-$300,000 with strong benefits.

Qualifications

• 15+ years in mechanical design, manufacturing engineering, product design, automation, test equipment, or related disciplines
• Excellent communication skills and genuine enthusiasm for working directly with customers
• Experience on high-volume electronics or NPI manufacturing floors — understand production workflows, line constraints, and what breaks from NPI to mass production
• Strong CAD chops (SolidWorks, Creo, NX, or similar)
• Real fluency in DFM, tolerance analysis, and mechanical design tradeoffs
• A builder's mindset — you'd rather solve an ambiguous problem than wait for a perfectly-scoped one
• Startup experience or a track record of driving initiatives independently (a plus)
• Willingness to travel occasionally to customer sites

Responsibilities

• Architect customer manufacturing solutions.
• Lead technical customer engagements across multiple teams.
• Design production-ready hardware including station placement, imaging strategy, mechanical fixtures, optics, lighting.
• Turn manufacturing data into decisions using customer images, test results, BOMs, production records

Skills

Mechanical design experience

Customer communication

Startup experience

Ambiguity-driven problem solving

Willingness to travel

DFM/tolerance analysis

Tools

SolidWorks

Creo

NX

Job description

Most senior mechanical engineers we talk to have hit the same wall: you've spent a decade getting great at one product category, and now every new project feels like a smaller version of the last one. You're ready for harder, more varied problems — but most senior IC roles just mean more of the same thing, not different things. This role is the opposite. You won't spend years iterating on a single product — you'll work across a wide range of customer applications, from AI infrastructure and networking equipment to consumer electronics and defense, often several of them in the same month. Every project is a new engineering challenge, a new manufacturing floor, and a new problem that hasn't been solved yet at that company. As a Principal Solutions Design Engineer, you'll combine mechanical design, electronics manufacturing expertise, and direct customer collaboration to build custom hardware and software solutions that go straight into real production lines — not a slide deck, an actual station on an actual floor. And if you've ever considered an MBA or a more strategic track that still uses your technical depth — this role is a rare way to get there without leaving engineering. You'll own solutions end-to-end: scoping technical tradeoffs with customer engineering teams, making the case to their operations and business stakeholders, and seeing your design decisions show up in cost, yield, and throughput numbers. It's the closest thing to running your own technical consulting practice, backed by a team that's already solved half the problems you'll run into.

About Instrumental:

Instrumental builds the manufacturing acceleration platform behind the world’s most complex electronics. We capture digital exhaust and engineering context from assembly lines—images, test logs, BOM data, performance, repair cycles—and our AI engines identify insights that are difficult or impossible for human engineers to find. We accelerate the companies building the AI era by improving manufacturing yield, throughput, and ramp. NVIDIA, Meta, Cisco, and their manufacturing partners rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product introduction and production.

What You'll Do:

• Architect customer manufacturing solutions. Partner directly with engineering, manufacturing, and operations teams to understand their production processes, technical requirements, and constraints. Translate that into end-to-end inspection solutions — figuring out where Instrumental stations belong in a line to maximize coverage, throughput, and business impact.
• Lead technical customer engagements. Be the technical voice throughout the customer lifecycle, balancing cycle time, manufacturability, ergonomics, cost, and inspection coverage — while working closely with Sales, Product, Hardware, Software, and Customer Success.
• Design production-ready hardware. Define the technical solution for each deployment: station placement, imaging strategy, mechanical fixtures, optics, lighting, and everything else that has to integrate seamlessly into a high-volume line.
• Turn manufacturing data into decisions. Learn how customers use their own data — images, test results, BOMs, production records — and build that into solutions that improve visibility and speed up decisions on the floor.

We're Looking For Someone Who Has:

• 15+ years in mechanical design, manufacturing engineering, product design, automation, test equipment, or related disciplines
• Excellent communication skills and genuine enthusiasm for working directly with customers
• Experience on high-volume electronics or NPI manufacturing floors — you understand production workflows, line constraints, and what actually breaks going from NPI to mass production
• Strong CAD chops (SolidWorks, Creo, NX, or similar)
• Real fluency in DFM, tolerance analysis, and mechanical design tradeoffs
• A builder's mindset — you'd rather solve an ambiguous problem than wait for a perfectly-scoped one
• Startup experience or a track record of driving initiatives independently (a plus)
• Willingness to travel occasionally to customer sites

Bonus Experience:

• High-volume consumer electronics
• Robotics or automation
• AI server or networking hardware
• Optical systems or machine vision

We’re a growing team that consistently works collaboratively, is supportive of each other, and is highly energized by the opportunity for large impact. We actively work to promote an inclusive environment, valuing passion and the ability to learn.

The following is a representative annual overall total compensation range for this position within the Bay Area: $210,000-$300,000. In addition, job level & salary opportunity is evaluated through our interview process – we review experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of each applicant.

Instrumental is very proud to offer a highly-rated variety of benefits including: Health, Vision, Dental, Public Transit/Commuter Plans, and Maternity/Paternity Leave.

At Instrumental, protecting company and customer information is a shared responsibility. All employees are expected to comply with company security and privacy policies and promptly report suspected security incidents or policy violations.