Job Description

About Astera

Astera Institute is a private foundation supporting ambitious work in science and technology through grants, investments, and in-house research. Its research programs combine the pace and autonomy of a startup with the freedom to pursue difficult scientific questions. Learn more about Astera’s mission at astera.org/vision.

About the Robotics Lab

We are building a frontier robotics lab at Astera Institute. We believe neuroscience and AI will converge in embodied intelligence: animals and robots face shared challenges of perceiving their surroundings, navigating, manipulating objects, and using memory and reasoning to accomplish tasks in the physical world. Robotics provides a powerful testbed for investigating how biological neural circuits solve these challenges and for developing AI systems that turn perception, learning, and cognition into effective action.

Our strategy starts with making robots useful, while developing a mechanistic understanding of how neural circuits can generate intelligent behavior. We aim to continually expand the repertoire of behaviors a robot can perform reliably in real environments, while improving its ability to learn new skills, adapt to changing conditions, and recover from failure. These practical capabilities provide both measurable outcomes and a foundation for investigating deeper principles of intelligence.

Position Summary

We are looking for a hands-on mechatronics engineer to design and build the mechanisms, electronics, and sensing systems our robots use to interact with the world. You will take hardware from concept and CAD through fabrication, board bring-up, integration, and testing on physical robots.

Based in our Robotics Lab in Emeryville, California, you will work closely with learning and control researchers on manipulators, dexterous hands, and humanoids. The role combines mechanical and electrical engineering with careful physical experimentation: understanding how a design behaves under load, finding the source of a failure, and improving the hardware.

Core Responsibilities

• Design and build robot mechanisms. Design mechanisms, end-effectors, arm–hand interfaces, and experimental fixtures; create CAD assemblies, fabrication drawings, and working prototypes.
• Develop robot electronics. Design and bring up PCBs for sensing, embedded interfaces, and power distribution, including component selection, schematic capture, layout, and board debugging.
• Integrate actuation and sensing. Integrate motors, drives, encoders, force/torque sensors, and tactile sensors with embedded firmware and robot control systems.
• Characterize and troubleshoot hardware. Measure and troubleshoot backlash, compliance, friction, drift, latency, thermal behavior, and other effects that influence robot motion and manipulation.
• Collaborate on robot design. Work with learning and control researchers to improve geometry, actuation, and sensor placement based on experiments with real robots.
• Make hardware reproducible and maintainable. Build repeatable bench and robot tests, document design decisions, and maintain the CAD, PCB, firmware, and assembly files needed to reproduce and service the hardware.
• Explore AI-assisted engineering. Explore AI-assisted CAD scripting, firmware development, and test automation, with engineering review and physical validation.

Desired Qualifications

• Electromechanical systems experience. Experience delivering complete electromechanical systems, with substantial personal responsibility for design, integration, and debugging.
• Mechanical design and prototyping. Strong CAD and mechanical design skills, including tolerancing, fabrication, assembly, and hands-on prototyping.
• PCB design and bring-up. Hands-on PCB experience from schematic capture and layout through board bring-up and troubleshooting.
• Actuation and electronics. Practical knowledge of motors, encoders, sensor electronics, power distribution, and embedded interfaces.
• Programming and firmware. Python, C/C++, or microcontroller programming skills for hardware integration, testing, and data collection.
• Experimental judgment and collaboration. A careful, measurement-driven approach to debugging and the ability to collaborate across hardware, controls, and machine learning.
• Robotics hardware experience. Robot manipulators, dexterous hands, compliant mechanisms, or contact-rich manipulation. Helpful, but not required.
• Sensing and test experience. Force/torque or tactile sensing, actuator characterization, and instrumented test fixtures. Helpful, but not required.
• Hardware and learning integration. Hardware iteration informed by control or learning experiments, and AI-assisted engineering workflows. Helpful, but not required.

Why Join Us?

Shape the physical systems through which robots learn and interact with the world. Your work will connect mechanical design, electronics, and sensing directly to the capabilities of manipulators, dexterous hands, and humanoids.

You will work closely with learning and control researchers, using real robot experiments to inform hardware decisions. This is an opportunity to build complete systems and explore how the robot’s body and its intelligence can be developed together.