Vehicle Integration Technician

MDS Staffing; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 185,000; Full time

Job summary

MDS Staffing seeks a Vehicle Integration Technician in Austin, TX. You will retrofit hardware to turn industrial machines into autonomous platforms, working hands-on with electrical, mechanical, and CAN systems.

You’ll install wiring harnesses, sensors, and controllers, visit customer sites for scoping and installation, and help write the playbook for deploying autonomy in the US.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience retrofit kits into autonomous machines.
• Background in automotive, robotics, autonomous driving, or heavy machinery.
• Hands-on builder with cross-disciplinary hardware skills.

Responsibilities

• Adapt platform hardware to fit each machine model.
• Build wiring harnesses and mount sensors and actuators on vehicles.
• Perform installation, commissioning, and acceptance testing at customer sites.
• Troubleshoot electrical, mechanical, and software integration.
• Provide feedback to platform engineering; ECU/embedded programming is a plus.

Skills

Electrical wiring

CAN/J1939

Mechanical assembly

Robotics integration

Embedded programming

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Job description

TITLE: Vehicle Integration Technician

ENVIRONMENT :AI, Industrial

LOCATION :Austin, TXHybrid

COMPENSATION RANGE :$120,000.00 - $185,000.00DOQ

DEGREE REQUIREMENTS:Bachelor's Degree

CITIZENSHIP:Open to H1B, OPT transfers

TRAVEL: 25% to customer sites

EXPERIENCE LEVEL:3-8 years experience

POSITION SUMMARY:

We are building the future of intelligent load handling by making industrial machines - forklifts, wheel loaders, diggers, and more - fully autonomous with "silicon brains." The company's machine-agnostic intelligence platform lets any machine, on any site, perceive, decide, and act autonomously. One platform. Any machine. No fleet replacement.

We are looking for a Vehicle Integration Technician with 4+ years of experience retrofit kits into working autonomous machines on real industrial vehicles. We need a hands-on, multi-skilled builder from automotive, robotics, autonomous driving, or heavy machinery who can install a full hardware stack (electrical, mechanical, and CAN) on a specific machine. We plan to retrofit 200+ vehicle platforms over the next four years, including forklifts, wheel loaders, and diggers of every brand. You'll be one of the first technical hires at the new Austin location, and you'll help write the playbook for deploying autonomy in the US.

The vision: one operator managing hundreds of machines simultaneously, with productive machine-hour cost dropping by 80x - unlocking the next productivity revolution in physical work.

What will you be doing?

• Adapting our standard platform hardware (power distribution, harnesses, sensors, compute, controllers) to fit each machine model. Most of the kit already exists, and you'll engineer the last 10% that makes it fit.
• Building and installing wiring harnesses, connectors, mounting brackets, sensors, and actuators on vehicles, then bringing them up through continuity, voltage, power, and CAN/J1939 checks.
• Going to customer sites to scope what each retrofit needs, then running installation, commissioning, debugging, and acceptance testing.
• Troubleshooting integration problems across the electrical, mechanical, and software layers, and sending clear change requests back to the platform engineering teams.
• Recording build issues and lessons learned to make Vehicle Adapter Kits better and more repeatable. ECU or low-level embedded programming experience is a big plus.