Senior Manufacturing Solutions Designer (Hybrid)

Canaan Partners; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 198,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Vision plan

Dental plan

Transit/Commuter benefits

Maternity/Paternity leave

Job summary

Instrumental is seeking a Senior Solutions Design Engineer in Palo Alto, hybrid, full-time. You will validate technical scope with sales, lead cross-functional teams, and design station solutions including optics and mechanical nests to fit customer applications.

You'll guide the project from concept through deployment, ensuring customer requirements are met while collaborating across engineering, operations, and quality. A strong startup or intrapreneur mindset is valued.

Qualifications

• B.S. or equivalent required; STEM degree preferred.
• 7+ years in product design, mechanical, electrical, or manufacturing engineering.
• Experience with industry standards and NPI processes.
• Customer-facing experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Technical Validation: validate scope of opportunities with sales and customers.
• Cross-functional depth across engineering, operations, and quality.
• Design Instrumental stations, including optics and mechanical nests.
• Oversee implementation from specification to deployment to meet customer requirements.

Skills

7+ years experience in engineering

Customer-facing mindset

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

B.S. or equivalent

STEM degree preferred

Job description

Senior Solutions Design Engineer

Palo Alto, CA

Sales

Hybrid

Full-time

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, L3Harris, and their manufacturing partners rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product introduction and production.

As a Senior Solutions Design Engineer, you will work with Instrumental’s rapidly growing go-to-market team to deliver technical solutions for various applications across leading electronics brands. This is a unique role that will leverage your hardware engineering background, technical curiosity, and interpersonal skills to directly influence how our customers build their products and help Instrumental scale.

If you’ve ever considered an MBA or a more strategic role that still leverages your technical expertise, this position will give you hands-on experience in business strategy, analytics, and customer-facing problem-solving. You'll gain exposure to AI applications in manufacturing while working closely with customers and our internal teams to implement high-impact solutions.

You will additionally be a key player in ensuring that our solutions not only meet immediate technical requirements but align seamlessly with customer business goals. Our team doesn’t wait for things to happen, we make them happen. Successful team members are problem solvers and adaptable – when it’s not in the playbook, they create the next play. When there is no playbook, they start one. Most of our go-to-market team is comprised of experienced engineers who understand how much time and manual effort goes into manufacturing – and have come to the business to increase their impact on our industry.

What You'll Do:

• Technical Validation: Work with sales to validate the technical scope of opportunities for new and existing customers, considering their business goals and current line constraints.
• Cross Functional Depth: Work in depth across engineering, operations, and quality to drive solutions within a diverse set of issues.
• Station Requirements & Design: Scope and design Instrumental stations, including optics and mechanical nest designs to suit customer applications.
• Oversee Implementation: Guide and mentor the project team through specification, design, development, and deployment to ensure customer requirements are met.

Who You Are:

• B.S. or equivalent experience required; STEM degree preferred
• 7+ years experience as a product design, mechanical, electrical, manufacturing, quality, or operations engineer Industry-specific experience in one or more of: consumer electronics, measurement and testing, heavy industry/manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, defense, etc.
• Strong understanding of manufacturing processes, information systems, change management, system implementation, and best practices during development, new product introduction (NPI), and mass production
• A desire to be customer-facing, with a customer-success mindset
• Demonstrated ability to be successful in a startup environment or as an intrapreneur in a larger organization.

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.

You’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t precisely match the job description!

The following is a representative annual overall total compensation range for this position within the Bay Area: $170,000-$198,000. 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.

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Req ID: R52