Senior Mechanical Design Engineer

GRAM; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Equity

Benefits

Job summary

GRAM is hiring a mechanical/aerospace engineer to design structures and mechanisms for insectoid systems. You will take concepts from sizing through CAD, prototyping, and testing, ensuring robust load paths and reliable assemblies.

You will own structural, environmental, thermal-packaging, and routing integration, with release drawings and BOMs for fabrication and verification. On-site in San Francisco Bay Area.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical, aerospace, or a related engineering field.
• Experience releasing complex mechanical parts in a major CAD system with drawings and GD&T.
• Proven ability to go from first-principles sizing to detailed CAD and prototyping.

Responsibilities

• Design structures and mechanisms to carry insectoid loads and protect critical systems.
• Own structural, alignment, thermal-packaging, routing, and service integration of subsystems.
• Produce release-quality 3D CAD, assemblies, drawings, GD&T, tolerances, and BOMs.
• Use hand calculations and FEA to evaluate stress, stiffness, buckling, fatigue, vibration, and thermal distortion.
• Build and instrument prototypes and compare measurements with predictions.
• Investigate failures and carry corrections through retest.

Skills

CAD design

FEA

GD&T

Structural analysis

Education

Bachelor's degree in mechanical/aerospace or related engineering field

Tools

NX

CATIA

Creo

SolidWorks

Job description

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 design the structures and mechanisms that carry insectoid loads and protect critical systems. You will move from first-principles sizing through detailed CAD, drawings, prototype hardware, instrumented test, and released revisions across lightweight structures, joints, housings, covers, routing, interfaces, and mechanisms. You will own the structural, alignment, environmental, thermal-packaging, routing, and service integration of machine subsystems, including the physical interfaces for actuator modules. The work demands explicit load cases and margins proved on physical hardware.

What you will do

• Turn robot motion, contact, transport, service, and fault cases into free-body diagrams, load cases, structural requirements, margins, and verification plans.
• Select and mechanically integrate actuators; design load-bearing body structures, joints and mechanisms, sensor and compute mounts, environmental enclosures, protective elements, and cable or hose routing.
• Produce release-quality 3D CAD, assemblies, drawings, GD&T, tolerance stacks, material and process specifications, and bills of materials.
• Use hand calculations and FEA to evaluate stress, stiffness, buckling, fatigue, vibration, impact, fastener behavior, and thermal distortion.
• Build and instrument prototypes; correlate strain, displacement, load, modal, impact, and cycle-life measurements with predictions.
• Investigate cracks, yielding, loosening, wear, fretting, misalignment, ingress, and assembly discrepancies, then carry corrections through verified retest.
• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical, aerospace, or a related engineering field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Released complex mechanical parts and assemblies in a major CAD system such as NX, CATIA, Creo, or SolidWorks, including drawings and ASME Y14.5 GD&T.
• Generated and released calculations for the governing structural failure modes and tolerance stack of hardware subsequently fabricated and tested.
• Took a complex mechanical assembly from CAD and drawings through fabrication, inspection, assembly, and instrumented test, resolving an as-built tolerance or process failure.
• Produced measured structural or mechanism test data and used it to resolve a fracture, deformation, fatigue, vibration, wear, or tolerance-driven failure through verified redesign.

Preferred experience

• Lightweight robotic, aerospace, automotive, or industrial mechanisms operating under dynamic and repeated loads.
• Nonlinear or dynamic FEA, modal testing, fracture mechanics, tribology, sealing, or environmental protection.
• Design for assembly, supplier technical review, inspection planning, or prototype-to-production transfer.

The annual base salary range for this San Francisco Bay Area position is $150,000–$185,000. Health coverage, benefits, and generous equity come with the role. This role is on-site in the San Francisco Bay Area. 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.