Lead Robotics Engineer at Proto-Town (Lockhart)
Proto-Town· Lockhart·
Role details
Job description
Lead Robotics Engineer - Legged Systems
The role
We are building a legged quadruped robot that carries a human rider, starting from scratch. There is no platform to modify, no reference design to scale up, and no prior program here to inherit. You would be the technical owner of the machine as it comes into existence: architecture, actuation strategy, prototype hardware, and the locomotion control stack.
What we're looking for
The center of this role is mechatronics: you work across mechanical design, motor control, and power electronics without handing off at the boundaries
- High-power electronics: Multi-kilowatt DC bus architecture, motor drive and inverter design or deep integration, battery pack and BMS selection, and the thermal design that keeps all of it alive under sustained load.
- Motor control: Field-oriented control, torque control, encoder and current sensing, and real-time firmware on embedded targets.
- Actuation: High torque-density drivetrain design: motors, gearboxes, backdrivability, and the tradeoffs between them.
- Fluency in the practical stack: C++ and Python, a real-time control target, CAN or EtherCAT, and a simulator you trust and know the limits of.
Backgrounds that tend to fit We are looking for people with experience in EV and e-mobility powertrain work, motor drive and inverter design, industrial servo and actuator manufacturing, or legged robotics. What matters is that you have shipped high-power motion hardware you designed yourself.
Why work at Proto-Town
- Culture: Described as a “resurrected spirit of experimentation” with a “frontier” mentality. The environment is deeply hands-on, hardware-first, and driven by builders rather than software optimizers. One employee described it as “not just LinkedIn and fake buttons that you’re clicking.”
- Work environment: On-site living is common (retrofitted shipping containers, old school buses, inflatable office buildings). The remoteness fosters deep focus and rapid iteration. Safety gets high attention (security checkpoint, emergency protocols).
- Remote/hybrid policy: Not explicitly stated, but the nature of the work (physical hardware, on-site testing, nuclear reactors) heavily implies on-site, hands-on presence is required. Likely not remote-friendly.
- Notable perks: Access to cutting-edge hardware infrastructure, proximity to elite founders and investors, ability to influence the physical build-out of an entire new town from scratch, and the chance to be part of a project that has been compared to the Manhattan Project in its speed and ambition.
- Engineering culture: Direct, gritty, and high-autonomy. You’ll likely be working on real physical systems—robots, reactors, drones, energy storage—rather than web dashboards. The talent pool includes ex-Waymo, Neuralink, and Tesla engineers.