---
title: 'Lead Machinist at Zoo'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-machinist-zoo-los-angeles-california-ajqz1spaeg6d'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Lead Machinist at Zoo

- **Company:** Zoo
- **Location:** Los Angeles California, United States
- **Compensation:** $30–$45/hr
- **Posted:** 2026-05-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://zoo.dev/jobs/4697240005?gh_jid=4697240005

## Job description

## About Us

Zoo is building the next generation of hardware design tools redefining how hardware products are designed, developed, and built. Our platform combines a modern, cloud-native CAD environment with AI-powered engineering workflows, helping teams design, iterate, and manufacture products faster than ever before. We are headquartered in Los Angeles, CA with both a local and remote team. We were founded and incubated by Embedded Ventures in 2021.

## About You

We’re looking for curious, innovative, and ambitious self-starters to join our growing team to help us bring our mission to life. We think you’ll thrive on our team if you’re:

- Curious at your core, with an eagerness to learn and do things differently
- Customer-focused, always thinking about ways to improve the user experience
- Able to operate autonomously and work asynchronously, while also being an effective team player

## About The Role

As a Lead Machinist at Zoo, you will own day-to-day operations of our machine shop and help build the physical hardware systems that power the future of engineering design. You will lead machining efforts across CNC mills, lathes, prototype equipment, and fabrication tools to produce high-quality parts used in product development, testing, fixtures, and production programs.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who thrives on precision, process improvement, and execution. You will program, set up, machine, inspect, and troubleshoot parts while helping establish shop standards, workflows, and operational excellence. You will work closely with mechanical engineers, software engineers, and leadership to translate digital designs into world-class manufactured components. You will play a critical role in bridging software-driven hardware design with real-world manufacturing.

## What You’ll Do

- Oversee daily operations of the machine shop, including scheduling, prioritization, workflow management, and equipment readiness
- Lead machining across CNC mills, CNC lathes, manual mills, manual lathes, and other fabrication equipment
- Set up, program, and operate machines to manufacture precision components, fixtures, prototypes, and production parts
- Interpret engineering drawings, CAD models, GD&T callouts, and technical specifications to produce accurate parts
- Partner closely with engineering teams to review manufacturability, tolerances, materials, and machining strategies
- Develop tooling, fixturing, workholding, and repeatable shop processes that improve throughput and quality
- Inspect finished parts using calipers, micrometers, indicators, CMM tools, or other metrology equipment
- Troubleshoot dimensional issues, machine problems, tooling wear, and process inefficiencies
- Maintain a safe, clean, and highly organized shop environment with strong operational discipline
- Track inventory of tooling, consumables, raw materials, and replacement components
- Support vendor coordination and overflow manufacturing when external shops are needed
- Help hire, train, mentor, and develop future machinists or shop technicians as the team grows
- Drive continuous improvement across cycle times, scrap reduction, uptime, and overall shop capability

## What You’ll Need

- 5+ years of machining experience with significant hands-on CNC experience
- Experience leading or supervising a machine shop, production cell, or manufacturing floor
- Strong expertise with CNC mills, lathes, tooling, setups, offsets, feeds, speeds, and machine optimization
- Experience programming using CAM software and editing machine code at the controller
- Ability to read engineering drawings and interpret GD&T and tolerance requirements
- Experience working from CAD models and collaborating with mechanical engineering teams
- Strong inspection and quality control skills using precision measurement tools
- Strong troubleshooting mindset with the ability to solve machining and process challenges quickly
- High attention to detail, craftsmanship, and pride in producing quality hardware
- Ability to balance prototype urgency with production consistency

## Nice to Have

- Experience in aerospace, automotive, hardware startup, or precision manufacturing environments
- Experience machining aluminum, stainless steel, titanium, plastics, and specialty materials
- Familiarity with modern CAD/CAM workflows and digital manufacturing systems
- Experience with Haas, Okuma, Mazak, DMG Mori, or similar equipment
- Knowledge of additive manufacturing, fixtures, or hybrid prototyping environments
- Experience building shop processes in a fast-growing startup setting

The salary range for this role is provided below. The final offer will depend on multiple factors including candidate experience, skills, expertise, and market data. Compensation may vary by geography. In addition to salary, we offer competitive equity as well as a full benefits package which may vary by geography as well.

Salary Range $30—$45 USD

Zoo is an equal-opportunity employer committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. The Zoo team is made up of incredibly talented and unique individuals from across the globe. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, Veteran status, age, or any other trait that unfairly targets a group of people. We encourage everyone interested in our mission to apply!

## About Zoo

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Zoo develops modern, AI-native CAD software for hardware design, including a full-featured platform enhanced with a conversational design agent.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed Stage)
- **Headquarters**: Inglewood, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Jessie Frazelle (Co-Founder & CEO), Jordan Noone (Co-Founder & Executive Chairman), Jenna Bryant (Co-Founder & Investor)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Software Development / Computer-Aided Design (CAD) / Hardware Design
- **Target Customers**: Hardware engineers, product designers, and manufacturing teams (B2B, Enterprise)
- **Mission**: To empower the hardware design industry with better, modern tools and build the tools the founders wish they had, transforming how physical products are conceived and developed.

## Products & Services
- **Zoo Design Studio**: The flagship product—a full-stack, AI-native CAD platform. It serves as the central hub for hardware design, combining traditional point-and-click modeling, a coding interface, and AI-driven design capabilities. Built on Zoo's proprietary, GPU-based, cloud-implemented geometry engine.
- **Zookeeper**: A conversational CAD agent integrated into Zoo Design Studio. It captures design intent through natural language prompts, researches and reasons through design problems, plans constraints, and generates fully editable, manufacturing-aware CAD models.
- **Text-to-CAD**: An ML-enhanced tool that allows users to generate CAD models from text descriptions.
- **Enterprise CAD APIs**: A suite of APIs for developers to integrate Zoo's geometry engine and capabilities into their own workflows.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available
- **Total Funding**: $5.0M (Seed Round led by Venrex, October 2023)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Venrex (lead investor), Embedded Ventures, and 11 other investors across multiple rounds. Key talent sources include Oxide Computer Company, Scale AI, Pixar Animation Studios, Cloudflare, and Arm.
- **Growth Signals**: 
    - **Headcount**: 45 employees, with a **95.3% year-over-year growth** rate.
    - **Global Reach**: Operates in 13 countries (US, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Poland, India, UK, and more).
    - **Security Milestones**: Achieved SOC 2 Type II audit and ITAR compliance; recently completed a security audit by Trail of Bits (June 2026).
    - **Product Velocity**: Launched Zookeeper, redesigned sketch mode, and continues to release blog posts and updates frequently.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proprietary Geometry Engine**: The first CAD engine to be GPU-based, cloud-implemented, API-accessible, and dynamically scalable. This acts as a digital bridge between hardware development and machine learning, creating a significant technical moat.
- **Conversational CAD (Zookeeper)**: A first-of-its-kind agent that reasons and designs around user intent, moving beyond simple automation to true AI-assisted design.
- **Hybrid Workflow**: Uniquely allows users to seamlessly switch between point-and-click, code, and conversational AI within a single environment, catering to different engineering preferences.
- **Enterprise-Grade Security**: ITAR-compliant and SOC 2 Type II certified, making it viable for defense and aerospace customers.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI-First Design**: Deepening the integration of AI (Zookeeper) to automate research, reasoning, and constraint generation, moving CAD from a drafting tool to a collaborative design partner.
- **Ecosystem Expansion**: Building out the broader CAD ecosystem with APIs and developer tools to become the standard platform for hardware design.
- **Performance & Scale**: Continuing to leverage its cloud-native, GPU-accelerated engine to handle complex, large-scale designs that traditional CAD tools struggle with.
- **Talent Acquisition**: Actively hiring senior engineers (Graphics, Cloud, Frontend, Language Development) to accelerate product development and scale the platform.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven**: The opportunity to fundamentally reshape the $10B+ CAD industry and solve the "boring" problems that have plagued hardware engineers for decades.
- **High Autonomy & Ownership**: Culture emphasizes operating with a high degree of autonomy and ownership, with a flat structure and a "solutions-oriented" mindset.
- **Technically Curious Team**: The company values continuous learning and innovation. The team includes talent from Pixar, Cloudflare, and SpaceX-level startups, creating a high-caliber peer group.
- **Global & Flexible**: Headquartered in Inglewood, CA, with a globally distributed team. Roles are listed as "In-Office or Remote," offering flexibility.
- **Transparency**: The company values radical transparency, even making its full SOC 2 report publicly available without friction.

## Sources
1. [zoo.dev](https://zoo.dev/)
2. [zoo.dev/careers](https://zoo.dev/careers)
3. [linkedin.com/company/zoodotdev](https://www.linkedin.com/company/zoodotdev)
4. [builtin.com/company/zoo-zoodev](https://builtin.com/company/zoo-zoodev)
5. [builtin.com/company/zoo-zoodev/jobs](https://builtin.com/company/zoo-zoodev/jobs)

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