Design and prototype custom fixtures, optical systems, and industrial hardware for customer manufacturing lines. Own mechanical design validation, communicate designs and timelines with internal teams, customers, and contract manufacturers, and support deployment activities. Improve design and delivery processes while providing cross-functional hardware assembly and onsite customer support.
As a Hardware Design Engineer, you will work with Instrumental’s growing Hardware Design & Solutions team, playing a critical role in designing solutions for Fortune 100 customers. You will leverage your design and manufacturing intuition to develop custom and complex fixtures, optical systems, and station/industrial hardware.
The Solutions team is part of our larger sales organization, which is uniquely full of former mechanical engineers who are now using their skills to support and enable engineers around the world. This team is critical to scoping, selling, and successfully implementing Instrumental’s AI technology on NPI and production lines for products as diverse as smartglasses, solar inverters, and high-performance compute racks. Every customer and product is different – leading to exciting, impactful projects.
You’ll tackle novel design challenges and leverage mechanical engineering fundamentals, CAD fluency, and knowledge of manufacturing processes. Good listening and natural curiosity are critical, as this role is all about understanding and designing for Instrumental’s users and integrating seamlessly into their processes.
- Has a get-stuff-done attitude, with an enthusiasm for solving problems and overcoming roadblocks
- Has attention to detail and enjoys continuously improving and optimizing their work
- Can take a mission, create their own plan, understand the requirements, and execute on-time and to the specifications
- Design Ownership: Create fixtures and optical designs for a wide range of products, ranging in size from tiny wearables to industrial appliances, that integrate smoothly into customer lines and processes.
- Prototyping: Own process to do early validation of fixture designs
- Design Communication: Collaborate internally with other Design Engineers, Solution Architects and our Operations team to deliver for the customer, may meet with customers and contract manufacturers to understand their needs and feedback and communicate your design approach;
- Project Management: Clearly communicate accurate timeline expectations and execute on high-quality designs to ensure our Operations team meets all of their committed deploy dates.
- Continuous Design and Process Improvement: Identify, collaborate, and execute on better ways for our team to deliver our product.
- Cross-functional Support: As there is a business need, proactively engage across teams to ensure that Instrumental can meet its objectives. This support may include assembly of Instrumental hardware, or providing onsite build support to customers.
Requirements:
- Core Technical Skills
- Business proficiency in English, including the ability to communicate effectively with global teams via email, video calls, and written documentation.
- CAD fluency in at least one 3D modeling program, NX preferred
- Experience with design for CNC machining
- Experience using prototyping methods such as FDM 3D printing
- Soft Skills:
- Demonstrated ability to work effectively in a global, distributed team environment
- Ability to travel within mainland China and throughout the APAC region (and potentially to our HQ office in Palo Alto, CA!) approximately 10-20% of the time to support project deployment and customer activities.
- Education & Experience:
- Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, or equivalent work experience
- 3+ years of professional experience doing CAD design work in electronics manufacturing or a related field, with a strong understanding of the processes and standards of the electronics manufacturing industry.
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