---
title: 'Mechanical Engineer at Terranova'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-engineer-terranova-berkeley-4m3dv96n0e1v'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Mechanical Engineer at Terranova

- **Company:** Terranova
- **Location:** Berkeley, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/terranova/3440efe0-08af-4932-b239-5128cc3956b1

## Job description

Company Description

Backed by leading climate and American dynamism investors, Terranova builds intelligent robotic systems to terraform the Earth itself - lifting land, restoring wetlands, and protecting critical infrastructure from floods and sea-level rise.

Our mission is to preserve the built environment, create new habitats, and usher in an era of abundance. Our work supports climate resilience, disaster recovery, and defense across the United States and beyond.

We’re assembling a world-class team that wants to work on something real, physical, and civilization-scale. If you want your work to reshape the world (literally), this is the place to do it.

What to to Expect

As a Mechanical Engineer at Terranova, you will own the mechanical design of large-scale robotic systems while maintaining a systems-level overview across mechanical, electrical, and controls disciplines. You will own problems end-to-end, move fast, and build machines that survive the real world. Expect to be hands-on, spend long hours in the factory and in the field working alongside technicians and operators.

## Key Responsibilities

- Act as an extreme owner for mechanical and electromechanical aspects of Terranova's field deployed robotic systems
- Perform first-principles engineering, FEA, hand calculations to optimize designs for real-world operation environments
- Lead prototype builds, execute test campaigns, and push hardware to its limits to ensure field reliability
- Collaborate closely with electrical, controls, and field deployment teams to deliver integrated, battle-tested systems
- Drive failure analysis, testing, and iterative improvement based on real-world data

## Preferred Skills and Experience

- Experience in mechanical or electromechanical hardware design and analysis (plus for experience in robotics)
- Strong CAD proficiency (OnShape)
- Hands-on fabrication and prototyping skills - you enjoy working hands on
- Deep mechanical intuition and ability to design from first principles
- Comfortable with the pace and intensity of early-stage startup life, including long days, 6-day workweeks, and extended field hours
- Bachelor’s degree or higher in Mechanical Engineering or related field
- U.S. permanent residency required

## Nice to Have Skills

- Experience in high voltage AC power (480V, 120+ kW) conversion systems and lithium batteries
- Experience with pumps and fluidics
- Experience with bulk material handling (conveyance)
- Experience in electromechanical controls, hydraulics, or field-deployed systems
- Familiarity with C++, Python, or similar for controls or simulation
- PCB and embedded systems design skills are a huge bonus

Ideal Archetype

- Have worked on development of heavy machinery, complex multi-part systems
- Maker background - love building stuff, work is fun to you
- Coming from a startup environment - high ownership, fast paced environment

## Compensation

- $90-140k based on experience
- Additional benefits

## About Terranova

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Terranova builds car-sized terraforming robots that inject a wood slurry deep underground to lift land out of flood zones, providing permanent elevation without surface disturbance.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: Berkeley, California, United States
- **Founded**: Not publicly available
- **Founders**: Trip Allen (CEO/Executive Chairman), Laurence Allen (Forward-Deployed CEO)

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Robotics Engineering, Climate Adaptation, Construction Technology
- Target customers: Real estate developers, infrastructure contractors, government agencies, defense organizations, and wetland conservation groups operating in flood-prone regions
- Mission or purpose statement: “To terraform the earth and usher in a new era of resilience and societal abundance” — Laurence Allen, CEO

## Products & Services
- **Terraforming Robot System**: A fleet of three car-sized injection robots and one “mothership” that can lift one acre by one foot per day. The robots inject a wood slurry deep underground to permanently elevate land with minimal surface disturbance.
- **Site Suitability Predictor**: An AI-driven tool that analyzes soil composition and flood risk to determine optimal project locations.
- **AI Injection Campaign Designer**: Machine learning reasoning models that design the precise injection pattern needed to achieve a desired surface topology.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: $25.1 million (post-seed round)
- **Key Metric**: $7 million in seed funding (closed three times oversubscribed)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Outlander VC (co-lead), Congruent Ventures (co-lead), GoAhead Ventures, Gothams, Ponderosa (Galvanize Climate fund), and angels including Palmer Luckey
- **Growth Signals**: Emerging from stealth in 2025 with a $7M seed round; targeting costs up to an order of magnitude less than levees or seawalls; actively hiring across robotics, embedded systems, and business development roles

## Competitive Advantages
- **Cost advantage**: Targeting costs up to 10x cheaper than traditional levees or seawalls
- **Speed**: Projects completed in 2–8 weeks versus 3–36 months for conventional methods
- **Minimal environmental impact**: Uses waste biomass (wood slurry) as fill; no surface disturbance; minimal ecological disruption compared to surface fill or seawalls
- **Permanent solution**: Elevation is permanent, providing proactive flood protection rather than reactive defense
- **Unique technology moat**: Proprietary combination of heavy robotics, geotechnical engineering, and AI/ML for subsurface injection

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling from prototype to full-scale production of robot systems
- Beginning first commercial elevation projects in flood-prone regions (e.g., San Rafael, CA)
- Growing core engineering and field deployment teams
- Expanding into multiple verticals: real estate development, infrastructure, defense, mining, and wetlands restoration

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Mission-driven climate tech startup tackling a massive global problem (flooding costs the U.S. economy over $180B/year)
- **Work model**: In-office, based in Berkeley, CA (HQ) with a secondary office in Miami Beach, FL
- **Team size**: ~22 employees (as of mid-2025); tight-knit, early-stage environment
- **Engineering focus**: Heavy emphasis on robotics, controls, embedded systems, and mechanical engineering — a hardware-heavy startup building physical robots
- **Recent job openings**: Robotics Controls Engineer, Embedded Systems Engineer, Senior Mechanical Engineer, Director of Business Development, and multiple intern positions
- **Growth trajectory**: Early-stage with strong investor backing and clear product-market fit; opportunity to shape the company’s technical direction and culture

## Sources
1. [terranova.inc](https://www.terranova.inc/)
2. [LinkedIn - Terranova](https://www.linkedin.com/company/terranova-inc)
3. [Built In - Terranova Careers](https://builtin.com/company/terranova)
4. [The Robot Report - Seed Funding](https://www.therobotreport.com/terranova-gets-seed-funding-deploy-terraforming-robots/)
5. [Ashby Jobs Page](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Terranova)

## Other roles at Terranova

- [Software Engineering Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineering-intern-terranova-berkeley-86ykdj3chn6h) — Berkeley, CA
- [Government Programs & Proposal Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/government-programs-proposal-lead-terranova-berkeley-n690j5n0b6j8) — Berkeley, CA
- [Shop Apprentice](https://feeny.ai/job/shop-apprentice-terranova-berkeley-wqahb12mtsqa) — Berkeley, CA
- [Mechanical/Test Engineering Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-test-engineering-intern-terranova-berkeley-m8yaxgtmxsy2) — Berkeley, CA
- [Drop Out Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/drop-out-engineer-terranova-berkeley-ab6wbn6gz4y6) — Berkeley, CA
- [VP of Ops](https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-ops-terranova-berkeley-8mzfk1d3knkn) — Berkeley, CA
- [Forward Deployed Operator](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-operator-terranova-berkeley-q7a8f9f0nx69) — Berkeley, CA
- [Controls/Robotics Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/controls-robotics-intern-terranova-berkeley-jxm04qgs5vck) — Berkeley, CA
- [Embedded Systems Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/embedded-systems-intern-terranova-berkeley-9xhyfdx9g665) — Berkeley, CA
- [Embedded Systems Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/embedded-systems-engineer-terranova-berkeley-4qhqhpd8pqxx) — Berkeley, CA