Senior Electrical Engineer at Arn Autonomy
Cox Exponential · South San Francisco, United States
About the Company
Arn Autonomy is building autonomous, non-humanoid robotic systems to constructinfrastructure in extreme, unstructured environments, starting with next-gen construction jobsites. Our vision is to disrupt the $16 trillion global construction industry by pioneering a newDeep Tech philosophy that blends robotics, AI, and systems engineering at the frontier. Ourflagship product, GRID, is an autonomous rebar-tying robot deployed with rebar and concretecontractors on live job sites.
About the Role
We're seeking a Senior Electrical Engineer to join the team building GRID, our rebar-tyingmobile robot. You will design, test, and manufacture electronic and electrical subsystems,including harnesses, control boards, test fixtures, and power electronics, for use in harshenvironments. This is a hands-on, cross-disciplinary role: you'll work alongside our mechanical,software, and manufacturing teams, with mentorship from senior engineers and a high degreeof autonomy.
Responsibilities
- PCBA Design & Prototyping: Own the design and development of multi-layer PCBAs for GRID's subsystems - including motor interfaces, sensor electronics, power distribution, communication interfaces, and test fixtures - through conception, to development, bring up, debugging, and manufacturing. Perform schematic capture and layout incorporating high-speed digital, RF, mixed-signal, and power circuitry.
- Electrical Architecture: Develop and maintain electrical system architectures, including DC power distribution, circuit protection, grounding, communication interfaces, and subsystem interconnections.
- Noise Immunity & EMI/EMC Compliance: Design robust electronics for operation in electrically noisy environments, addressing grounding, shielding, filtering, signal and power integrity, and transient protection. Ensure designs meet applicable EMI/EMC regulatory requirements through pre-compliance testing, troubleshooting, and formal compliance testing.
- System Integration: Work with mechanical and software engineers to properly dimension power distribution and integrate electronics, wiring, and harnesses into field-ready assemblies that withstand outdoor dust, vibration, temperature swings, and weather
- Reliability & Validation: Identify potential failure modes, implement appropriate protection and fault-monitoring mechanisms, and develop test procedures to validate hardware performance, reliability, and environmental robustness. Participate in system-level and field testing.
- Documentation: Deliver schematics, layout reviews, engineering studies, test results, and architecture documents so designs are traceable and reproducible
- Design Reviews: Generate and present design concepts, and run design reviews with team members
- Manufacturing Support: Apply design-for-manufacturing and design-for-test principles. Collaborate with fabrication, assembly, and manufacturing partners to support prototype builds, production testing, and hardware revisions.
- Role Variability: This role covers design, assembly, manufacturing, and test. Your mix of responsibilities will depend on the project and team, giving you broad exposure to robotics hardware development
Required
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5+ years of professional experience designing and developing electronic hardware.
- Strong understanding of analog and digital electronics, power systems, and core electrical engineering principles.
- Experience designing electrical wiring harnesses, including connector selection, wire sizing, shielding, routing, and manufacturing documentation.
- Experience designing for EMI/EMC regulatory compliance and electrical noise immunity, including shielding, filtering, ESD and transient protection, and pre-compliance testing.
- Experience with DC power distribution, voltage regulation, circuit protection, and system-level electrical integration in electromechanical systems.
- Experience developing embedded hardware incorporating microcontrollers, sensors, and digital communication interfaces.
- Proficiency with PCB design tools such as Altium Designer, KiCad, or equivalent.
- Strong hands-on experience with electronic test equipment, board bring-up, hardware debugging, and root-cause analysis.
- Familiarity with design-for-manufacturing and design-for-test principles.
- Ability to independently own hardware development from requirements through prototyping, validation, and integration, while collaborating effectively across engineering disciplines.
- Authorized to work in the United States.
- This is an in-person role, five days a week, in the San Francisco Bay Area. You must be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate.
Preferred
- Experience designing motor controllers, BLDC motor drives, or other power electronics.
- Experience with battery-powered systems, DC-DC converters, and high-current power distribution.
- Experience with communication interfaces such as CAN, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, UART, and USB.
- Embedded firmware development experience in C and Python scripting for test automation or hardware validation.
- Experience with mobile robotics, industrial automation, or other electromechanical systems.
- Experience with designing/preparing for UL/ANSI/FCC/CE certification of robotics platforms.
- Experience developing ruggedized electronics for outdoor environments, including environmental sealing, vibration resistance, and thermal management.
- Familiarity with functional safety concepts, emergency-stop circuits, interlocks, and fault monitoring.
- Experience transitioning hardware from prototypes to production, including working with PCB fabrication and assembly partners.
- Demonstrated experience with schematic capture and multi-layer PCB design, including high-speed digital and RF layout, signal integrity, impedance control, grounding, and stackup design.
- Ability to rapidly learn, evaluate, and adopt new AI tools and platforms as project needs evolve.
Benefits
Why join us:
- Opportunity to do foundational work on a real product: your designs ship on GRID, a robot deployed on live construction job sites
- Hands-on experience in electrical design, integration, testing, and debugging on real hardware
- Opportunity to impact a new era of purpose built robots that create real value
- Collaborate with mechanical, software, and manufacturing engineers in a small, fast-moving team
We're a startup moving fast, and being in the room together is how we build.
- Kaiser Gold HMO health plan
- Relocation support
- Daily lunches
- Flexible PTO
- Dog pets
Arn Autonomy is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receiveconsideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity orexpression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any othercharacteristic protected by applicable law.