Robotics Engineer

Neuralink; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Neuralink is developing a next-generation surgical robot to perform brain surgery at scale, installing hundreds of tiny threads for brain-computer communication. You will own the robot test fleet, break robots into testable components, and automate accelerated life testing to ship capabilities safely and repeatedly.

You will bring up, instrument, and run robots and fixtures, hunt failures across mechanics, electronics, firmware, and software, and design fast, repeatable tests with strong

Qualifications

• Hands-on robotics experience and troubleshooting across hardware and software.
• Proven ability to instrument and test robotic systems with repeatable results.
• Strong comfort with reading schematics and diagnosing failures across domains.

Responsibilities

• Own building the robot test fleet and breaking robots into testable components.
• Automate routine robot V&V, test setup, execution, recovery, and results.
• Turn real failures into repeatable regression tests to reduce hardware time.
• Work with Sim and HIL engineers to align models with reality.
• Document failures with traceability and clear evidence.

Skills

Hands-on robotics experience

Robot troubleshooting & debugging

Python scripting for test automation

AI-assisted tooling & data analysis

High ownership & initiative

Education

Bachelor’s degree in a technical field

Equivalent practical experience

Tools

Oscilloscopes

Logic analyzers

Data acquisition systems

Schematic reading

Ethernet, SPI, I2C, UART, EtherCAT interfaces

Job description

• Neuralink’s next generation surgical robot will perform brain surgery at scale, installing hundreds of tiny threads into the brain to enable brain computer communication
• You’ll own building out the robot test fleet. Break robots into testable components, build rigs that reproduce operating conditions, perform surgeries on brain proxies, and automate accelerated life testing (ALT). Your fleet gives us the evidence to ship new capabilities regularly and safely. When the robot misbehaves, you’re in the lab figuring it out
• Bring up, instrument, and run robots and component test rigs
• Hunt failures across mechanics, electronics, firmware, and software
• Automate routine robot V&V, test setup, execution, recovery, and results
• Design and build fixtures, sensing, and logging, with safe operating procedures and fast turnaround
• Work with Sim and HIL engineers to make the models and tests match reality
• Turn real failures into repeatable regression tests so we stop burning hardware time on known bugs
• One day you’ll be chasing a failure that happened once, the next you’ll be building systems that run the same way every time. We need someone who can do both and knows which one the day calls for
• Note: The team is hiring engineers at all levels, both junior and senior. What matters most is evidence of exceptional abilities and a drive to succeed

• Hands-on robotics experience.
• You’ve made a robot work, broken it, and made it work again.
• Comfortable reading schematics, building instrumented fixtures, and using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and data acquisition systems to diagnose failures.
• Discipline about repeatability, traceability, and recording what actually happened.
• High agency on hardware, comfortable with noise, intermittent faults, and failures that resist reproduction.
• Hands-on experience with motor drives, encoders, sensors, and hardware interfaces such as Ethernet, SPI, I²C, UART, or EtherCAT.
• Required: Bachelor’s degree in a technical field (Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, etc.) or equivalent practical experience.
• Effective at using AI agents to build tooling, analyze data and automate failure investigations.
• Judgment to know when a robot is ready, and the diligence to bring the evidence to back it up.
• Enough Python to automate tests and analyze results, and a basic understanding of Rust.