---
title: 'Research Hardware Engineer at Convergent Research'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/research-hardware-engineer-convergent-research-san-francisco-2g2wrejqv9m0'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Research Hardware Engineer at Convergent Research

- **Company:** Convergent Research
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $183k–$240k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch/aafb13e6-bdc0-42c7-b704-43516d225a01

## Job description

## About Arbor Neuroscience

(formerly Forest Neurotech) Arbor is a nonprofit research organization working on one of the hardest open problems in clinical neuroscience: how to change brain circuits by design. Millions of people with depression, chronic pain, and other brain disorders have no treatment that works. Modulating activity in the brain circuits underlying their symptoms – with electrical stimulation, focused ultrasound, or magnetic stimulation – can work spectacularly well. But it doesn't work reliably, and we can't predict who it will help. That's what Arbor aims to fix. The starting point is a new class of experiment: intervene, measure how the circuit responds, track the symptom, and repeat in the same individual over months. We’re building the necessary experimental platform. It currently includes the Forest 1 ultrasound system, which works like a wearable functional MRI, but with higher resolution. The system images activity across large brain volumes, including deep brain structures, and will soon stimulate as well. We are also adding electrode-based interfaces in animal studies. From these data, we'll build models to make neuromodulation predictable. Arbor is a Focused Research Organization within the Convergent Research family, and the new name for Forest Neurotech. We're a mission-focused nonprofit, doing multidisciplinary translational work that doesn't fit in a lab or on a company roadmap. We have the funding to run the first phase, and we're a small team – the people we hire now will shape what Arbor becomes.

## The Role

This is the person who makes sure the hardware exists to get the science done.

Arbor currently runs, and will be launching, several kinds of experiments in humans and animals. Hardware is a bottleneck across these efforts:

- Development of the Forest 1 ultrasound device is continuing, largely in collaboration with an external commercial partner with substantial engineering capacity. For this effort, the role is less about hands-on engineering than about understanding our experimental constraints well enough and having the engineering credibility to make sure the device gets built the way our science requires.

- Our human studies are longitudinal, and the goal is for the research to take place in participants' homes. That means developing a system that is more portable, more robust, and usable by people who aren't researchers.

- We're also building a first-of-its-kind platform combining chronic electrophysiological stimulation and recording with bidirectional ultrasound for initial use in animals. You'd work closely with the scientific team on the mechanical and electronic components: implant design, simple circuit boards, and benchtop testing.

As a nonprofit research organization, we also want to make these tools available to the broader research community. That means platforms documented, reproducible, and robust enough that collaborators can readily use them.

The work spans mechanical, electrical, and bioengineering, and we don't expect one person to do it all. What matters is knowing what's needed, knowing what you should build yourself, and knowing who to bring in for the rest. Like everyone here, you'd also end up doing things outside that description – we’re small, and roles are wide.

We're hiring at multiple levels and will calibrate scope and title to your experience. At the earlier end, you'd own the hardware work in close collaboration with the scientific team. With more experience, you'd set the engineering direction and build the team as it grows.

## What You’ll Do

- Work directly with the scientists running the experiments to understand their needs and translate them into hardware requirements

- Own our side of Forest 1 development: characterize how the current device performs in our experiments, define what the next version needs, and work with the engineering partner to get it built

- Design, build, and help validate hardware for a novel platform combining bidirectional electrophysiology and ultrasound in animals, including implants, headstage interfaces, simple circuit boards, and test rigs

- Make Forest 1 portable and robust enough for use outside the clinic

- Identify what we should build in-house and what we should contract out, and manage the contractors when we do

- Prepare our platforms for use by outside groups: documentation, reproducibility, and the robustness that requires

Who We’re Looking For

The successful candidate will have:

- Depth in at least one of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or bioengineering, and enough working knowledge of the others to know what you need and who to ask

- A record of building physical things that worked: instruments, devices, rigs, or research hardware, ideally in a setting where the requirements weren’t always clear or fixed

- The credibility and judgment to work with a strong external engineering team and ensure the outcome meets our requirements

- Comfort with CAD and, ideally, simple board design

- A network you can draw on for the work we don't do ourselves

- Genuine interest in the experiments and clinical applications the hardware serves

- Directness without friction – you say what you think, ask when you don't know, and aren't looking to compete with your colleagues

Nice to have: experience with ultrasound systems or transducers; neural interfaces, electrodes, or implantable hardware; wearable or at-home medical devices; work with large animals; experience at a small company or academic lab where you built your own tooling; regulatory or safety testing experience.

You don't need a neuroscience background. You do need to want one.

Our benefits include: Medical, dental, and vision – most plans fully covered for you and your dependents 401(k) with up to 6% match Company-paid life and AD&D, with voluntary supplemental options 15 holidays plus a floating day for your birthday 3 weeks PTO increasing with tenure, and separate sick leave Arbor will consider sponsorship for U.S. work authorization case by case. Sponsorship isn't guaranteed, and immigration timelines can affect start dates. Where we sponsor, we cover the legal and government fees. Arbor is an equal opportunity employer. We hire based on talent and experience and don't discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

## About Convergent Research

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Convergent Research is a nonprofit organization that launches and supports Focused Research Organizations (FROs) to build foundational technologies that unblock scientific progress.
- **Entity Type**: Private Nonprofit (501(c)(3))
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Adam Marblestone, Anastasia Gamick

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Scientific Research and Development Services (NAICS 5417)
- **Target customers**: B2B — scientific researchers, universities, government agencies, and philanthropic funders; operates as a "mission control" launching public-good R&D projects.
- **Mission statement**: “Spectacularly good futures are within reach, but only if we mind the gaps. Scientists need essential technologies to do the groundbreaking research all of us depend on.”

## Products & Services
Convergent Research does not sell commercial products. Instead, it incubates **Focused Research Organizations (FROs)** – time-bound, technically ambitious nonprofit efforts designed to produce high-impact public goods. Current and past FROs/projects include:

- **Cultivarium**: Developing tools for studying novel (previously unculturable) microorganisms.
- **E11 Bio (EVE Bio)**: Brain circuit mapping technologies.
- **Forest Neurotech**: Neural technology and biosensing platforms.
- **Ocean CDR Atlas**: Open-access tool for ocean-based carbon dioxide removal measurement.
- **Fundamental Development Gap Map (v1.0)**: A public web portal identifying bottlenecks holding back science.

Convergent Research provides shared operational support (legal, finance, HR, communications) across all FROs.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (nonprofit).
- **Annual Revenue (FY2024)**: **$72.4 million** (ProPublica IRS filing). Total revenue for FY2024 was $100.1 million.
- **Total Grant Funding Received**: At least $25.1 million from Vanguard Charitable, $9.5 million from Probabilistic Computing Foundation, $8 million from The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation (latest filings).
- **Total Funding Raised**: ~$2 million in disclosed grants (led by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2023); the vast majority comes from additional major philanthropic gifts not categorized as single-investor rounds.
- **Notable Partners/Funders**: Advanced Research and Intervention Agency (ARIA, UK), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, Vanguard Charitable, Probabilistic Computing Foundation.
- **Growth Signals**: 164 employees (as of latest CauseIQ data, up from ~23 on LinkedIn); headquarter presence in Palo Alto, Cambridge (MA), and Boulder (CO); expanded into the UK via a collaboration with ARIA (“FROST UK”); 15 active job postings with 25% month-over-month posting growth.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Novel institutional model**: Focused Research Organizations (FROs) fill a gap between traditional academia and for-profit startups — targeted, time-boxed, public-good missions.
- **Lean central infrastructure**: Shared operational support lets FRO scientists focus purely on technical breakthroughs, avoiding administrative overhead.
- **High-caliber scientific network**: Leaders include senior scientists from MIT, Caltech, King’s College London, and CMU as grantees/collaborators.
- **Access to major philanthropic capital**: Partners with some of the largest climate and science foundations globally.

## Strategic Focus
- **Geographic expansion**: Formal partnership with ARIA in the UK to launch FROs abroad (“FROST UK”).
- **Gap mapping**: Releasing and refining the Fundamental Development Gap Map to systematically identify the biggest bottlenecks in science.
- **Scaling the FRO model**: Adding new FROs in ocean CDR, neuroscience, and molecular engineering; hiring Founders in Residence to spin up new efforts.
- **Public data as product**: Committed to releasing open datasets and protocols (e.g., drug–target assay data, Lean proof library) as public goods.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven**: Direct, hands-on impact on solving foundational scientific bottlenecks rather than incremental product improvements.
- **Culture**: Described as “mission control” — fast-paced, collaborative, technical. Leadership emphasizes pushing high-risk, high-reward projects.
- **Locations**: On-site positions in Palo Alto (CA), Cambridge/Boston (MA), and Boulder (CO). Some roles are US- or UK-based.
- **Team composition**: Small, senior-heavy centralized team (~20 core staff in Palo Alto) plus larger distributed FRO project teams (~164 total organization-wide). Significant cross-functional work across legal, finance, operations, and science.
- **Typical roles**: Postdoctoral Research Scientists, Research Associates, Biosensing Engineers, Finance/Operations Managers, General Counsel.
- **Compensation transparency (IRS filing)**: CEO Adam Marblestone — $431,025; President Anastasia Gamick — $360,495; competitive nonprofit scientific salaries.
- **Notable perks**: Working with world-class scientists and funders; contributions to genuinely public-good science; tax-deductible donation eligible organization.
- **Remote/hybrid**: Mostly on-site (Boulder, Palo Alto, Cambridge); limited remote possibilities depending on role.

## Sources
1. [convergentresearch.org](https://www.convergentresearch.org/)
2. [jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch](https://jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch)
3. [linkedin.com/company/convergent-research](https://linkedin.com/company/convergent-research)
4. [causeiq.com – Convergent Research](https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/convergent-research,883013217/)
5. [projects.propublica.org – Convergent Research Inc](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/883013217)

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