Product Development Engineer

Stealth Startup; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Stealth Startup, based in Austin, seeks a Product Development Engineer to turn partially defined concepts into real, working systems. You will design mechanisms around novel material behavior, prototype, test, and integrate them into existing products.

Your work spans CAD, prototyping, testing, and complete assemblies while collaborating with leadership and technical partners. You will build polished demonstrators and establish lab workflows, BOMs, and repeatable test methods, enabling rapid

Qualifications

• Degree in Mechanical Engineering or related field.
• Approximately 5 years of hands‑on experience in mechanical design, prototyping, and integration.
• Strong fundamentals in mechanisms, tolerances, and materials behavior.
• Experience moving from concept to working assemblies with complete documentation.
• Solid CAD ability; SolidWorks preferred and familiarity with embedded components is a plus.
• Ability to work in a fast‑moving, early‑stage environment and document work clearly.

Responsibilities

• Design mechanisms that translate active-material behavior into controlled movement.
• Develop strain paths, load‑transfer structures, and compliant mechanisms.
• Convert concepts into CAD models, prototypes, and complete assemblies.
• Integrate motion systems into existing products to demonstrate real‑world applications.
• Combine mechanical systems with electronics, sensing, power, and basic embedded control.
• Build test rigs to characterize performance and reliability.
• Prototype, test, debug, and refine systems in short cycles.
• Identify and mitigate mechanical, thermal, optical, electrical, and material failure modes.

Skills

Mechanical engineering

Mechatronics

Robotics

CAD

Prototyping

Electronics integration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering

Tools

SolidWorks

3D printing

Embedded systems

Job description

Mechanical / Mechatronics — Advanced Materials & Physical Systems

About the Company

We are an early-stage, stealth hardware company building a new motion platform for the physical world.

Mechanical movement still relies overwhelmingly on motors, gears, hydraulics, pneumatics, and other technologies that have changed relatively little in decades. These systems work, but they are often heavy, rigid, noisy, complex, and difficult to integrate into the next generation of intelligent products.

We believe advanced materials can fundamentally change how products move.

Our first phase is focused on turning a new class of active materials into practical motion systems: lightweight, silent, compliant mechanisms that create movement without conventional actuation architectures.

Over time, our ambition is much broader—to integrate advanced materials into products across robotics, mobility, consumer technology, medical devices, industrial systems, and entirely new product categories.

The company is being built by an experienced team with a track record of developing, manufacturing, and commercializing hardware at scale. We are now building our core engineering capability in Austin.

The Role

We are hiring a mechanically strong, hands‑on Product Development Engineer to turn partially defined concepts into real, working systems.

You will design mechanisms around unfamiliar material behavior, integrate them into existing products, and develop new functions that demonstrate what this technology can enable. Your work will span early experimentation, CAD, prototyping, testing, system integration, and the creation of polished demonstration units.

Mechanical design and physical system integration are the primary disciplines. Practical electronics and firmware capabilities are also important because you will often need to build the complete system—not just one component of it.

You will help turn an emerging materials platform into:

• Working actuation systems
• Integrated product applications
• Validated mechanisms and reference designs
• Repeatable, documented builds
• High-quality partner and investor demonstrators
• The engineering knowledge behind a new category of physical products

Location and Working Style

This role is based in our Austin office (expected to open in Q3 on US-290 between Oak Hill and Dripping Springs) and requires regular hands‑on access to the lab, equipment, materials, and physical prototypes. It is therefore primarily an in‑person position.

We support a hybrid schedule based on project requirements and individual circumstances. Some phases of development will require more time in the office, particularly during prototyping, integration, testing, and demonstrator builds.

What You Will Do

• Design mechanisms that translate active-material behavior into useful, controlled movement.
• Develop strain paths, load‑transfer structures, constraints, linkages, compliant mechanisms, and packaging architectures.
• Convert early concepts and technical direction into CAD, prototypes, and complete assemblies.
• Integrate new motion systems into existing products to demonstrate compelling real‑world applications.
• Combine mechanical systems with practical electronics, sensing, power delivery, and basic embedded control.
• Build fixtures and test rigs to characterize force, displacement, response time, efficiency, temperature, fatigue, and repeatability.
• Prototype, test, debug, and refine systems in short, deadline‑driven development cycles.
• Identify mechanical, thermal, optical, electrical, and material failure modes and implement practical improvements.
• Optimize systems for force output, efficiency, thermal performance, durability, packaging, and manufacturability.
• Build polished demonstrators suitable for customer, partner, investor, and public presentations.
• Establish lab workflows, documentation standards, bills of materials, assembly processes, and repeatable test methods.
• Capture what you learn so individual experiments become reusable engineering knowledge and platform‑level capability.
• Work directly with company leadership and specialist technical partners to help shape the product roadmap.

What We Are Looking For

You are a mechanically grounded engineer who likes building physical things—not only analyzing or simulating them. You are comfortable working from incomplete inputs, learning through experimentation, and making progress before every variable is fully understood. You can move quickly without losing engineering discipline, and you care equally about whether something works and whether someone else can reproduce it.

Core Requirements

• Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, Robotics, or a closely related discipline.
• Approximately 5 years of relevant hands‑on experience, including meaningful internships, research, competition teams, or personal projects.
• Strong mechanical engineering fundamentals and the ability to design functional mechanisms and assemblies.
• Demonstrated experience building, testing, and debugging physical prototypes.
• Strong CAD capability; SolidWorks experience is preferred.
• Understanding of material behavior, load paths, tolerances, thermal effects, and compliant systems.
• Experience moving from an idea or sketch to a functioning physical assembly.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast‑moving, early‑stage environment with evolving requirements.
• Clear technical documentation and communication skills.
• Ability to work regularly from our Austin office.

Helpful Experience

• Rapid prototyping, including 3D printing, machining, model making, composites, or basic fabrication.
• Mechanism design, soft robotics, compliant mechanisms, smart materials, or unconventional actuator systems.
• Practical electronics integration, including sensors, power systems, microcontrollers, and PCB‑based assemblies.
• Basic embedded programming and closed‑loop control.
• Designing test fixtures and collecting physical performance data.
• Thermal management, optics, materials characterization, or electromechanical packaging.
• Experience producing polished prototypes or demonstrators—not only proof‑of‑principle experiments.
• Evidence of fast iteration and resourceful, hands‑on problem‑solving.

You do not need prior experience with our specific material platform. Curiosity, strong physical intuition, and the ability to learn through building are more important.

Why Join

This is an opportunity to join at the point where a proven scientific capability must become a real engineering and product platform.

You will not be optimizing a mature product or working on a narrow subsystem. You will help establish the mechanisms, test methods, design rules, integration approaches, and reference systems that future products will be built upon.

The immediate mission is concrete: make advanced‑material motion work reliably in real applications.

The longer‑term opportunity is much larger: help redefine how intelligent physical products are designed, built, and experienced.