---
title: 'Senior Mechanical Design Engineer at Rhoda AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-mechanical-design-engineer-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-2cg916mrjppb'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Senior Mechanical Design Engineer at Rhoda AI

- **Company:** Rhoda AI
- **Location:** Mountain View, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-05-13
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/rhoda-ai/ded6d49b-22e9-4559-b96c-6430cd09efc3/application

**Skills:** Thin-walled component design, High-performance composites, Fiber-resin systems, GD&T, CATIA, CAD studies, Dimensional stack-up analysis, FEA analysis, Moldflow, Structural analysis, Mold design, Textiles integration, Artificial leather integration, Elastomers integration, Cellular structures integration, Injection molding, RIM manufacturing, Vacuum forming, Thermoforming, Polymer surface finishes

> Own the full product lifecycle for robot Class-A surfaces, managing design from concept to mass production. The role focuses on thin-walled component design, industrialization, and integration of cladding subsystems using advanced materials and CAD tools.

## Job description

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $450M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

Senior Mechanical Design Engineer – Robot Cladding & A-Class Surfaces

What to Expect

As a Senior Engineer, you will own the full product lifecycle of our robot’s Class-A surfaces that define its appearance and protect its core.

Robots are high performance multiaxial kinematic systems where heavy-duty structural integrity meets sub millimeter precision.

In this role, you are the CEO of your components. You will navigate a diverse landscape of materials (e.g., textiles, polymers, and composites), interfacing with cross-functional teams to ensure our products are functional, reliable, robust, and well-crafted.

We operate as T-shaped engineers. While you must be a generalist capable of solving any hardware challenge, your superpower for this role must be thin-walled component design and industrialization from concept to mass production.

## What You’ll Do

- End-to-End Ownership: Manage the product lifecycle from initial concept and design studio interaction to end-of-life, ensuring feasibility, sustainability, and craftsmanship.
- A-Class Surface Integration: Integrate the cladding subsystem of your ownership, balancing aesthetic, mechanical, cost, and time constraints.
- Systems & Tolerance Management: Define design criteria and lead engineering studies for subsystem compatibility. Perform dimensional stack-up analysis for critical-to-function and aesthetic interfaces.
- Detailed Engineering & DfM: Design complex B-side features (ribbing, bosses, clip towers, hooks) that support performance without compromising A-side aesthetics. Develop robust attachment strategies, including joining features (e.g., snaps, hooks, welds).
- Validation & Prototyping: Coordinate cladding prototype builds, evaluate assembly feasibility during slow builds, and validate components against requirements.
- Technical Documentation: Produce high-fidelity 3D CAD models (CATIA preferred) and 2D engineering drawings with comprehensive GD&T and datum strategies.
- Simulation & Failure Avoidance: Interpret FEA analysis (e.g., structural, Moldflow) to iterate designs. Think at a systems level and apply a failure mode avoidance mentality to ensure long-term reliability.
- Supplier & Cross-Functional Interaction: Partner with Supply Chain and Tier 1/2 suppliers for RFQs and technical feasibility reviews; troubleshoot integration issues during build phases.

## What You’ll Bring

- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, or a related field.
- Experience: 5+ years of engineering experience, including at least one full-cycle product launch.
- Core Fundamentals: Proficiency in design integration to balance material selection, geometry, and structural trade-offs informed by product use cases and functional/engineering requirements.
- Technical "Superpower": Deep Knowledge in thin-walled component design and/or high-performance composites (fiber-resin systems).
- Engineering Tools: Ability to define datum strategies and tolerances from concept through to Class-A maturation with a deep understanding of GD&T as a driver. Proficiency in CATIA (or equivalent) with the ability to communicate ideas through sections and CAD studies to progress development to production.
- The "Owner" Mindset: Exceptional organizational skills and the ability to use first principles thinking to solve technical bottlenecks under tight timelines.

Bonus Points (The "Plus" List)

- Soft Goods Experience: Experience integrating textiles, artificial leather, elastomers, or cellular structures into designs.
- Advanced Manufacturing: Deep knowledge of injection molding, RIM, vacuum forming, or thermoforming.
- Finishing & Lighting: Familiarity with polymer surface finishes (painting, plating, etc.) or integration of vehicle interior lighting.
- Dual-Hat Experience: Background in both Design Engineering and Manufacturing/Assembly Engineering.

## About Rhoda AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Rhoda AI builds robot foundation models that learn from internet-scale video to enable manipulation-capable robots to generalize in real-world industrial environments.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed + Series A; $680M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, CA, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Jagdeep Singh (CEO), Eric Chan (Chief Scientist), Changan Chen (Chief Research Officer), Andrew Wooten, Gordon Wetzstein (Scientific Advisor) [rhoda.ai/team](https://www.rhoda.ai/team)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Hardware
- **Target customers**: B2B – industrial enterprises in automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce
- **Mission/purpose**: “Building at the frontier of embodied intelligence” and “Designing intelligence for the real world” – deploying general-purpose robot foundation models that adapt to the variability of commercial and industrial environments. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/) | [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)

## Products & Services
- **Rhoda Robot Platform (Hardware + Software)**: A turnkey robotic system with custom actuators (25kg rated, 40kg peak payload), safety-rated vision, wheel-base, and brakes in every actuator. The platform runs the **Direct Video Action** model, which pre-trains on over a million real-world videos and post-trains on task-specific robot data. Long-context windows enable single-shot learning from human demonstrations without retraining. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **FutureVision Intelligence Layer**: A proprietary architecture that handles real-world industrial tasks autonomously by generalizing beyond conventional VLA pipelines. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **Deployment Services**: End-to-end solutions for tasks such as returns processing, bearing decanting, container breakdown, and material transport in logistics and e-commerce facilities. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding **$680M** – Seed round $67.4M (April 2024), Series A $162.6M (April 2025), and Series A $450M (March 2026) with 4 investors. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not individually named in available sources; partners include customers in automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount growth of **+20% monthly** (LinkedIn reports 55 employees; Built In reports 73 employees – conflicting data). Talent sourced from companies like QuantumScape, Flexiv Robotics, Scale AI, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, and Stanford University. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai) | [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Direct Video Action architecture** with web-scale video pre-training gives a strong prior on motion, physics, and dynamics, enabling generalization beyond lab settings.
- **Custom high-performance actuators** (25kg rated, 40kg peak) with safety-rated brakes and vision – designed for 3+ years of continuous operation at rated payload.
- **Long-context in-context learning** allows the robot to perform tasks single-shot from human demonstrations without retraining.
- **Turnkey industrial deployments** that handle ambiguity and variability (e.g., debris, transparent bags, heavy boxes) – tasks customers initially believed could not be automated. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling robot intelligence through a pre-training/post-training paradigm, moving from controlled labs to reliable production environments.
- Expanding commercial deployments across automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce verticals.
- Pursuing a path to **physical AGI** by combining foundation models with custom hardware for real-world adaptability. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Building at the frontier of embodied intelligence” – emphasis on hard problems, first-principles thinking, and category-defining systems. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Work policy**: Hybrid workspace (employees combine remote and on-site work), with offices in Mountain View and Palo Alto, CA. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Engineering culture**: Strong research focus (Chief Research Officer, Chief Scientist, many research engineers/scientists). Recent job postings include Research Scientist, Robot Perception Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Fullstack Engineer, and Product Manager. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Notable perks**: Not explicitly listed, but the company is well-funded ($680M) and at an early stage (founded 2024), offering significant growth opportunity and impact.

## Sources
1. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/) – Company website (product, technology, commercial applications)
2. [rhoda.ai/careers](https://www.rhoda.ai/careers) – Careers page
3. [rhoda.ai/team](https://www.rhoda.ai/team) – Leadership team and co-founders
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai) – Built In profile (employee count, offices, job listings, hybrid policy)
5. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai) – LinkedIn company page (funding, headcount, executive list, talent sources)

## Other roles at Rhoda AI

- [Robotics Test Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-test-engineer-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-fawz7jcaj9pv) — Mountain View, CA
- [Senior Data Project Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-project-manager-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-3r8qd12vvp3g) — Mountain View, CA
- [Senior Hardware Reliability Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-hardware-reliability-engineer-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-tb5a3r2wpf2a) — Mountain View, CA
- [Supply Chain Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/supply-chain-manager-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-at62gnb3hppz) — Mountain View, CA
- [Robot Pilot](https://feeny.ai/job/robot-pilot-rhoda-ai-munich-ae615mvnydam) — Munich, Germany
- [Senior Fleet Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-fleet-software-engineer-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-bbmg1fzakq3b) — Mountain View, CA
- [Fleet Response Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/fleet-response-engineer-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-qk40e501tskz) — Mountain View, CA
- [Senior Electrical Engineer (Hands)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-electrical-engineer-hands-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-63xfzs2xajpn) — Mountain View, CA
- [Research Member of Technical Staff- Robot Learning Systems & Reliability](https://feeny.ai/job/research-member-of-technical-staff-robot-learning-systems-reliability-rhoda-ai-azp0647ma7en) — Mountain View, CA
- [Strategic Finance Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-finance-manager-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-efncjc6jbpjr) — Mountain View, CA