Robotics Electrical Engineer

Ixian Robotics; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Equity: 0.1%–1%

Job summary

Ixian Robotics in San Francisco is seeking a hardware engineer to own electrical designs from block diagram to working hardware: schematics, PCB layout, component selection, assembly, bring-up, and validation. Your work will connect power, sensing, actuation, and compute into systems that operate reliably together.

You’ll spend the bench time and in design tools, writing firmware to exercise your boards, investigating electrical and timing problems, and collaborating with mechanical and software

Qualifications

• Experience taking a board from schematic and layout through bring-up.
• Proficiency in a PCB design tool such as Altium or KiCad and practical analog, digital, and power-electronics fundamentals.
• Understanding of grounding, noise, decoupling, protection, and interface constraints.

Responsibilities

• Design and lay out PCBs, balancing signal integrity, grounding, thermal constraints, component availability, and testing.
• Build power architectures with conversion, distribution, protection, and monitoring.
• Integrate sensors, motor electronics, and communication interfaces; design harnesses for reliable assembly and service.
• Bring up boards using scopes and test firmware; isolate faults across hardware and software.
• Develop validation procedures and test fixtures to catch intermittent faults and ease future builds.
• Collaborate with fabricators and assembly partners; maintain design documentation and resolve issues from manufacture or integration.

Skills

PCB design

Altium

KiCad

Analog and digital electronics

Power electronics

Embedded programming

Bench instrumentation

Soldering / rework

System bring-up

Tools

Altium

KiCad

Job description

About Ixian

Ixian Robotics is building intelligent machines to reindustrialize America. We’re based in San Francisco and backed by a16z and Accel.

We believe robotics is a full-stack problem. Software, hardware, and machine learning are only part of it. Bridging advances in robot learning with America’s industrial base requires invention in how we understand customers, design products, navigate supply chains, and make the economics work. We’re building a company that takes responsibility for all of it.

At Ixian, deployment isn’t the final step after the “real innovation” is complete. Deploying robots is the point of robotics, and deployment is our forcing function for innovation. Putting a machine to work reveals what the lab can’t: what breaks, what matters to the people using it, and what it will take to make our machines indispensable.

Robots are called machines when they work. We intend to build machines.

About the role

You’ll own electrical designs from block diagram to working hardware: schematics, PCB layout, component selection, assembly, bring-up, and validation. Your work will connect power, sensing, actuation, and compute into systems that operate reliably together.

You’ll spend time at the bench as well as in the design tools. You’ll write the firmware needed to exercise your boards, investigate electrical and timing problems, and work with mechanical and software engineers to get complete systems running.

What you’ll do

• Design and lay out PCBs, balancing signal integrity, grounding, thermal constraints, component availability, and ease of testing.

• Build power architectures with appropriate conversion, distribution, protection, and monitoring.

• Integrate sensors, motor electronics, and communication interfaces; choose connectors and design harnesses for reliable assembly and service.

• Bring up boards using scopes, analyzers, and test firmware; isolate faults across hardware and software.

• Develop validation procedures and test fixtures that catch intermittent faults and make subsequent builds easier to verify.

• Work with fabricators and assembly partners, maintain design documentation, and resolve issues uncovered during manufacture or integration.

What you’ll bring

• Experience taking a board from schematic and layout through bring-up, with examples of problems you diagnosed and fixed.

• Proficiency in a PCB design tool such as Altium or KiCad and practical analog, digital, and power-electronics fundamentals.

• Understanding of grounding, noise, decoupling, protection, and the constraints of interfaces you’ve used.

• Confidence using bench instruments, soldering and reworking boards, and testing a hypothesis systematically.

• Enough embedded programming experience to bring up peripherals, inspect communications, and validate your own hardware.

Useful experience

• Motor-control electronics, battery systems, synchronized sensing, or high-speed interfaces.

• EMC testing, manufacturing test development, or improving reliability across repeated hardware builds.

Location: San Francisco · On-site

Schedule: Full-time

Base salary: $150,000–$200,000 per year

Equity: 0.1%–1%

Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision coverage.

Equal opportunity

Ixian Robotics is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.