Senior Electrical Engineer, Embedded Hardware

GRAM; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation bonus

Health coverage

Equity

Benefits

Job summary

GRAM in San Francisco Bay Area is seeking a Senior Electrical Engineer, Embedded Hardware to own low-voltage electrical architecture and embedded hardware interfacing sensors, compute, and control. The role emphasizes mixed-signal design, board bring-up, EMI/EMC considerations, and reliability testing across environments.

Success means released hardware with validated signal integrity and timing, and collaboration across teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or a related field or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience with embedded hardware design spanning sensors, compute, and control interfaces.
• Experience designing mixed-signal and digital interfaces for sensors, clocks, converters, and power sequencing.

Responsibilities

• Translate sensing, compute, communications, calibration, diagnostic, environmental, and fault requirements into electrical architectures, interface specifications, signal budgets, and verification plans.
• Define and verify electrical interfaces for cameras, inertial sensors, encoders, force or torque sensors, ranging sensors, embedded compute, timing devices, and communication components against measured system requirements.
• Design and release mixed-signal, digital, sensor-interface, communication, power-sequencing, and controller-support circuitry with controlled schematics, PCB layouts, bills of material, and revision history.
• Own connector selection, pinouts, cable and harness drawings, shielding, grounding, separation, derating, strain relief, service loops, continuity requirements, and electrical acceptance criteria.
• Bring up boards, sensors, compute, and networks using oscilloscopes, logic and bus analyzers, spectrum or network instrumentation, programmable supplies, thermal measurements, and automated acquisition.
• Characterize signal integrity, noise, clock and time-distribution behavior, communication margin, startup and brownout behavior, grounding, emissions susceptibility, and injected faults on representative assemblies.
• Carry embedded hardware through design review, supplier fabrication, inspection, assembly, programming support, calibration, machine integration, manufacturing test, nonconformance closure, and verified release.
• Released and brought up embedded electronics for a robot, vehicle, instrument, industrial machine, or comparable electromechanical product using controlled schematics, PCB layouts, bills of material, and revisions.
• Designed mixed-signal or digital interfaces involving sensors, embedded compute, clocks, converters, communication physical layers, protection, filtering, and power sequencing.
• Produced connector pinouts and cable or harness documentation, then verified continuity, grounding, shielding, signal integrity, communication margin, or electromagnetic performance on assembled hardware.
• Closed an electrical integration failure by reproducing it with bench instrumentation, identifying the physical or circuit-level root cause, releasing a correction, and demonstrating the fix through repeated test.

Skills

Robotics sensors

CAN

EtherCAT

Ethernet

MIPI

USB

LVDS

Precision analog acquisition

Distributed time synchronization

Education

Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or related field

Job description

Senior Electrical Engineer, Embedded Hardware

The Mission

GRAM is a self replication company creating populations of insectoids for the physical economy.

Our first research frontier is self-preservation: the base case of physical self-replication. Our machines will survive, coordinate, and recover without humans. We believe scalable machine labor requires more than single-agent task generality or machines shaped in our image.

About the role

You will own the low-voltage electrical architecture and embedded hardware connecting sensing, computation, communications, and control. The work spans electrical integration of sensors and compute, mixed-signal interfaces, network physical layers, custom interface and controller boards, connectors, harness drawings, grounding, shielding, electromagnetic compatibility, and board bring-up under real switching, vibration, and configuration changes.

Success means a released electrical system with measured signal integrity, timing, compatibility, and fault behavior across representative loads, vibration, environmental exposure, and configuration changes.

What you will do

• Translate sensing, compute, communications, calibration, diagnostic, environmental, and fault requirements into electrical architectures, interface specifications, signal budgets, and verification plans.
• Define and verify electrical interfaces for cameras, inertial sensors, encoders, force or torque sensors, ranging sensors, embedded compute, timing devices, and communication components against measured system requirements.
• Design and release mixed-signal, digital, sensor-interface, communication, power-sequencing, and controller-support circuitry with controlled schematics, PCB layouts, bills of material, and revision history.
• Own connector selection, pinouts, cable and harness drawings, shielding, grounding, separation, derating, strain relief, service loops, continuity requirements, and electrical acceptance criteria.
• Bring up boards, sensors, compute, and networks using oscilloscopes, logic and bus analyzers, spectrum or network instrumentation, programmable supplies, thermal measurements, and automated acquisition.
• Characterize signal integrity, noise, clock and time-distribution behavior, communication margin, startup and brownout behavior, grounding, emissions susceptibility, and injected faults on representative assemblies.
• Carry embedded hardware through design review, supplier fabrication, inspection, assembly, programming support, calibration, machine integration, manufacturing test, nonconformance closure, and verified release.
• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Released and brought up embedded electronics for a robot, vehicle, instrument, industrial machine, or comparable electromechanical product using controlled schematics, PCB layouts, bills of material, and revisions.
• Designed mixed-signal or digital interfaces involving sensors, embedded compute, clocks, converters, communication physical layers, protection, filtering, and power sequencing.
• Produced connector pinouts and cable or harness documentation, then verified continuity, grounding, shielding, signal integrity, communication margin, or electromagnetic performance on assembled hardware.
• Closed an electrical integration failure by reproducing it with bench instrumentation, identifying the physical or circuit-level root cause, releasing a correction, and demonstrating the fix through repeated test.

Preferred experience

• Robotics sensors, embedded compute, CAN, EtherCAT, Ethernet, MIPI, USB, LVDS, precision analog acquisition, or distributed time synchronization.
• High-reliability harnessing, grounding and shielding, EMI or EMC testing, environmental qualification, or electrically noisy motion systems.
• Hardware-in-the-loop systems, production programming and calibration, automated board test, supplier technical review, or low-volume complex electromechanical builds.

The annual base salary range for this San Francisco Bay Area position is $150,000–$190,000. Health coverage, benefits, and generous equity come with the role. This role is on-site in the San Francisco Bay Area. A relocation bonus is available. We hire to start as soon as possible. We review what you’ve shipped; if it’s the caliber we seek, interviews take about a week, start to finish. We treat your work and conversations with discretion.