Senior 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 someone who already knows this problem. Not robotics in the abstract — the specific, gnarly reality of putting an abrasive against a metal part with a robot and getting a good result, repeatably, in a production environment. If you've wrestled with wheel wear, force control, fixturing that survives a foundry, cycle times that actually close a business case, and the thousand small failures between a clean demo and a cell that runs a shift unattended, you're who we want. You'll shape how we build cells, what tooling we standardize on, and how we solve finishing problems we haven't seen yet.
What you'll do
- Own the mechanical design of our grinding and finishing cells (end effectors, tool changers, force compliance, fixturing, dust and safety systems).
- Solve real process problems: material removal, surface-finish targets, wheel and media selection, contact mechanics, cycle time.
- Get on the floor, and have your designs constantly tested in production.
- Set the standard for how we approach new parts and new customers mechanically.
What we're looking for
- Direct experience with robotic grinding, deburring, or surface finishing. You've shipped or deeply worked on systems that drive a tool against a part.
- Real grasp of the process, not just the mechanism: abrasives, contact forces, material removal, finish quality.
- Comfort with force/torque control, compliance, and the sensing that makes finishing work (we run ATI sensors, Yaskawa and KUKA arms, Zivid vision).
- Someone who thrives in the field and on the floor, not only in CAD.
- The judgment to know what's good enough to ship and what isn't.
Nice to haves
- Foundry, casting, or heavy-manufacturing exposure.
- Experience taking a cell from prototype to running-a-shift-unattended.
- Familiarity with industrial robot integration and machine safety systems.
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.