About this role
ABOUT NIDUS
Nidus is building autonomous manufacturing systems powered by AI and robotics. U.S. manufacturers are under growing pressure to increase output while navigating workforce constraints, underutilized equipment, and increasingly complex supply chains. The next generation of manufacturing will be enabled by more intelligent, flexible automation — systems that help people and machines work together to expand capacity and improve productivity.
Nidus is building the intelligence layer that makes that possible. The team comes from the intersection of defense technology and AI, with deep experience across ML, robotics, product development, and defense — and a track record of shipping products to DoD customers.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Nidus is building vision-language-action models that enable robots to perform complex manipulation tasks in real-world environments. The quality, reliability, and scalability of the hardware used to collect data and deploy these systems are fundamental to that mission. As Staff Hardware Engineer, you will define and lead the technical architecture for robotic data-collection platforms, end effectors, camera systems, and customer workcells — owning major hardware programs from early requirements and system architecture through validation, production, and fleet deployment.
This is a senior individual-contributor role with broad technical influence and a clear path to leadership. You will establish engineering standards, resolve complex cross-disciplinary tradeoffs, lead high-risk design efforts, and create reusable hardware platforms that support new manipulation tasks, robot embodiments, and customer environments. You will remain deeply hands-on while raising the technical bar across the organization through design reviews, mentorship, and long-range technical planning.
WHAT YOULL DO
- Define the technical architecture and long-term roadmap for robotic data-collection systems and customer-deployed workcells
- Translate company, product, model-training, and customer requirements into scalable hardware platforms and subsystem specifications
- Own system-level tradeoffs across mechanical design, sensing, controls, compute, safety, reliability, manufacturability, serviceability, cost, and deployment speed
- Identify the highest-risk technical problems, establish validation strategies, and drive programs from ambiguous requirements to reliable deployed systems
- Establish design principles, interfaces, qualification standards, documentation practices, and configuration-management processes across the hardware organization
- Lead architecture reviews, design reviews, failure investigations, and technical readiness assessments for critical hardware programs
- Architect robotic data-collection platforms that produce consistent, high-quality training data across operators, tasks, sites, and robot configurations
- Partner with ML and data teams to determine how embodiment design, sensor placement, calibration, latency, repeatability, and hardware variation affect data quality and policy performance
- Lead the design and development of end effectors, including grippers, custom fingers, tool interfaces, compliant mechanisms, force-sensing elements, and quick-change systems
- Define reference architectures for complete robotic workcells incorporating robot arms, end effectors, cameras, compute, networking, power distribution, safety systems, fixtures, and operator interfaces
- Lead technical discovery for customer deployments, including site surveys, task analysis, risk identification, and requirements definition
- Partner directly with customers and internal deployment teams during installation, commissioning, acceptance testing, troubleshooting, and system upgrades
- Use lessons from field deployments to improve the core hardware platform and reduce installation time, service burden, and site-specific engineering
- Mentor engineers and raise the quality of system design, technical judgment, documentation, and root-cause analysis across the team
YOU SHOULD HAVE
- 8+ years of experience developing complex mechanical, electromechanical, robotic, automation, or sensing systems
- A track record of leading technically complex hardware programs from ambiguous requirements through architecture, detailed design, validation, production, and field deployment
- Demonstrated ownership of systems containing interacting mechanical, electrical, optical, software, and operational elements
- Deep proficiency with a modern 3D CAD platform such as SolidWorks, Onshape, Creo, or NX
- Strong command of mechanical engineering fundamentals including tolerance analysis, GD&T, structural design, materials, fasteners, bearings, actuators, cable management, and manufacturing processes
- Experience designing production-quality parts and assemblies and creating drawings, bills of materials, assembly procedures, and configuration-controlled documentation
- Hands-on experience integrating cameras, sensors, actuators, embedded compute, networking, and power systems
- Experience designing verification, qualification, lifecycle, and reliability tests for complex hardware
- Experience leading design reviews, resolving cross-functional technical disagreements, and influencing engineering direction without relying on formal authority
NICE TO HAVE
- Experience developing robotic grippers, custom fingers, tool changers, compliant mechanisms, tactile or force-sensing systems, or other manipulation hardware
- Experience architecting industrial robot, cobot, laboratory automation, warehouse automation, or machine-vision workcells
- Experience developing hardware used specifically for robot learning, teleoperation, demonstration collection, or large-scale robotics datasets
- Experience with machine safety and robotics standards such as ISO 10218, ISO/TS 15066, or ANSI/RIA R15.06
- Experience with DFMEA, fault-tree analysis, tolerance analysis, accelerated lifecycle testing, environmental qualification, and formal engineering change control
- Experience managing technical relationships with strategic suppliers, contract manufacturers, and external system integrators