Feeny
Mind Robotics

Mechanical Design Engineer, Plastics at Mind Robotics (Palo Alto, CA)

Mind Robotics· Palo Alto, CA·

Role details

Work type
Onsite
Employment
Full-Time

Job description

About Mind: 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.

Responsibilities

  • Own the mechanical design of A-surface plastic components for the robot — covers, skins, shrouds, bezels, and cosmetic enclosures — from industrial design intent through production tooling.
  • Develop Class-A surfaces and translate ID surfacing into manufacturable parts, holding gap-and-flush, parting line, draft, and aesthetic intent across the full assembly.
  • Select polymers and processes across the cosmetic stack: ABS, PC, PC/ABS, PA and glass-filled grades, TPU/TPE, and specialty resins — balancing appearance, impact and creep behavior, chemical and UV resistance, flammability, and cost.
  • Define and own GD&T, tolerance stack-ups, and datum schemes across multi-part plastic assemblies and their interfaces to structures, actuators, and electronics.
  • Drive DFM and DFA for injection molding, insert molding, overmolding, and secondary operations — gate and ejector strategy, wall thickness, ribbing and boss design, warp and sink mitigation, and shutoff design.
  • Own cosmetic specification: textures, gloss levels, color matching, painting, plating, laser etching, and in-mold decoration, plus the defect standards and limit samples that go with them.
  • Work directly with tool shops, molders, and CMs through tool kickoff, T0/T1 sampling, tuning, and PPAP — reviewing mold flow, tool design, and first-shot parts, and driving corrective action.
  • Build and test prototypes using 3D printing, urethane casting, CNC, and soft tooling, then validate with drop, structural, and environmental testing.

Qualifications

  • Exceptional mechanical intuition. You understand how polymers flow, shrink, warp, and fail — and you can predict it before the tool is cut.
  • 5+ years designing injection-molded plastic parts for high-volume consumer, automotive, or robotics products, with parts you took from CAD through production tooling.
  • Deep, hands-on knowledge of polymer materials science: resin families, fillers and additives, anisotropy, moisture sensitivity, and how process conditions change part behavior.
  • Fluent in GD&T (ASME Y14.5 or ISO GPS) and tolerance analysis, including worst-case and statistical stack-ups on compliant plastic parts.
  • Proven experience owning cosmetic A-surface parts and defending appearance standards with vendors.
  • Strong surfacing skills in SolidWorks, CATIA, NX, Creo, or similar; comfort reading mold flow results and tool drawings.
  • Comfortable with ambiguity, moves fast, and curious about how the whole system works.

Why work at Mind Robotics

  • Massive impact per person: The company explicitly states it is "building a lean, collaborative team where every individual has a massive impact" — a rare promise for a company with over half a billion in funding.
  • Hardware-in-the-loop culture: Engineers and researchers work directly with physical hardware daily, solving real-world problems rather than just simulation.
  • Top-tier team: Colleagues include alumni from Tesla, Rivian, Databricks, and Physical Intelligence, creating a high-caliber peer group.
  • Work policy: Hybrid workspace (combination of remote and on-site work) with a strong in-office presence in Palo Alto, CA. Most roles appear to be on-site or hybrid.
  • Open roles: 22 active positions across hardware engineering (actuation, motor design, electrical design, tactile sensing), software engineering (robotics, firmware, controls, ML infrastructure), and data platform roles.
  • Culture highlights: The company looks for "builders who are passionate about robotics and live for the challenge of making systems work in messy, complex environments." They emphasize a lean, collaborative team where every individual has massive impact.

Application questions