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Palo Alto, California, United States
Onsite
Mind Robotics is building Physical AI for real-world industrial deployment, starting with the factory floor. We believe the hardest problems in AI are solved when researchers and engineers are hands-on with the physical world every day - and we're looking for people who are passionate about robotics, value ownership, and are excited to tackle difficult problems. Join us if you want to move beyond digital intelligence and put intelligence into motion.
At Mind Robotics, we're building generalized physical AI — robotic systems capable of dexterous, adaptive, and reasoning-intensive work in real-world industrial environments. Systems engineering is the discipline that holds it all together: translating mission requirements into hardware reality and ensuring every subsystem behaves as a coherent whole.
We're looking for a Systems Engineer to own integration across the robot — from decomposing high-level behaviors into measurable specs, to debugging the hard interactions that only surface when everything is running together. You'll collaborate with hardware and firmware teams on system architecture, and define and own the specs for how the robot behaves. You'll be on the bench as much as you're in a doc, sitting at the intersection of mechanical, electrical, firmware, and controls, accountable for the system from concept through field deployment.
Contribute to architectural decisions for new robot subsystems — communication protocols, control strategies, and hardware-software partitioning — alongside firmware/controls, mechanical, and electrical teams
Collaborate with electrical, mechanical, safety, and firmware teams to define interfaces and validation strategies early, and lead calibration and tuning efforts to hit performance targets
Define software requirements from high-level system requirements, using first-principles analysis and hardware/model-based testing — from top-level robot performance targets down to subsystem budgets and interfaces
Prototype and characterize components and full systems; design early builds to de-risk new technologies before committing to production architecture
Debug hardware-software interactions hands-on during design, launch, and field deployment — pulling and analyzing logs, adding debug instrumentation/tracing to firmware and software, and recompiling and re-flashing to isolate root cause — and surface nth-order impacts of electrical, software, or process changes before they become problems
Analyze failure modes, complete DFMEAs/HARAs, and define system-level test plans from bench testing through field deployment
Drive readiness reviews, sign-off, and post-launch monitoring across firmware, hardware, controls, reliability, and manufacturing stakeholders
Degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent experience
2+ years in systems engineering or a cross-disciplinary hardware role involving complex electromechanical or robotic products
Strong hardware and software fundamentals — able to bridge electrical schematics, embedded communication protocols, and firmware architecture; comfortable with a scope and multimeter during bring-up
Hands-on experience debugging complex subsystems involving networked microprocessors and software-controlled electromechanical devices — comfortable reading, modifying, and recompiling C/C++ firmware/software yourself to add debug logging, instrument code paths, and iterate on a fix, not just reading code to hand off to firmware engineers
Experience defining requirements from high-level system behaviors and making them measurable and testable; able to write scripts or tooling to improve bring-up and validation efficiency
Proficient in data analysis and visualization — able to instrument systems, extract signal from noisy hardware data, and communicate findings clearly across mechanical, electrical, and software teams
You are comfortable with ambiguity, move fast, and have an "engineering curiosity" that drives you to understand how the entire system works, not just your part
Background in robotics, EV powertrains, drones, or other dense electromechanical systems
Exposure to manufacturing self-test design or service diagnostics
Experience with functional safety standards (ISO 26262, IEC 61508) or automotive/robotics validation processes
Experience in failure modes analysis, HARA, and FTA
