Pivot Robotics

Mechanical Engineer at Pivot Robotics (San Francisco, CA)

Pivot Robotics· San Francisco, CA·

Role details

Work type
Onsite
Employment
Full-Time

Job description

The role

We're looking for a strong, hands-on mechanical engineer to join our hardware team. You don't need to be an expert in grinding or robotics yet, but you need to be a genuinely good builder who's hungry to learn a hard, physical problem and get their hands dirty doing it. You'll work alongside our existing mechanical engineers designing, building, and deploying the robotic cells that finish metal parts in real factories. The impact is tremendous. All of these parts go on to exist inside buildings, planes, cars, streets, robots, data centers, other factories, and even things that go into space.

What you'll do

  • Design and build parts of our grinding and finishing cells (fixturing, end effectors, mounts, guarding, the mechanical guts of a working machine).
  • Turn designs into real hardware: CAD, fab, assembly, and the iteration in between.
  • Get on the floor. You'll help deploy and debug cells in customer facilities and learn the process from the parts up.
  • Grow into ownership of harder mechanical problems as you go.

What we're looking for

  • 2+ years of experience
  • Solid mechanical engineering fundamentals and strong CAD skills.
  • Someone who actually builds things and proof you've made real hardware.
  • Hunger to learn robotic grinding and surface finishing from the ground up.
  • Comfort being on a factory floor, and being wrong on the way to being right.
  • Low ego, high output, and deep care in transforming the way America builds things.

Nice to have

  • Worked at a startup and/or been on deployments
  • Experience with robot integration, fixturing, or automation.
  • Hands-on fabrication skills (machining, welding, etc.).
  • Exposure to manufacturing or foundry environments.

None of it happens if you can't build it. If this resonates, we'd love to talk.

Why work at Pivot Robotics

  • Hard problems with real impact: Work on cutting-edge vision-guided robotics in challenging environments (foundries, aerospace). The code you ship gets used daily in production.
  • Team: Small, high-caliber team of engineers from Uber ATG, Meta, Google X, Nimble Robotics, and ABB. Founders are former Meta robotics engineers and Carnegie Mellon graduates.
  • Culture: Ownership mentality, execution focus, comfort with "real-world messiness." They value first-principles problem solving and deep technical expertise.
  • Work environment: Hybrid workspace – employees combine remote and on-site work. Main office in San Francisco, CA, with a robot operator internship site in New Boston, Ohio.
  • Perks: Not explicitly detailed, but the culture emphasizes autonomy, cutting-edge robotics, and solving meaningful manufacturing challenges.

Application questions