Member of Technical Staff - Robotics Hardware

About Warp At Warp Sciences, our mission is to help the world discover new medicines faster—and build the capacity to do it here in America. We bring AI, robotics, and life sciences together in automated labs that design, run, and learn from experiments, with each experiment making the next one better. We’re not developing drugs of our own. We’re building the infrastructure for the people who do.

Our systems combine AI, robotics, commercially available labware, and purpose-built machines to handle reagents and execute experiments with minimal human intervention.

We’re looking for a Member of Technical Staff, Robotics Hardware to help build the physical infrastructure of autonomous science. This is a highly multi-disciplinary role where you’ll work with chemists, AI researchers, software engineers, and other hardware engineers to identify and define high impact automation opportunities in the chemistry lab. You will be responsible for the design and implementation of these robotics and automation solutions from start to finish.

What You’ll Do

• Execute with speed and rigor. You know when to optimize for learning velocity vs. execution velocity, when to run a simulation vs. build a prototype, and when to use OTS hardware vs. build something custom.

• Effectively evaluate and communicate trade-offs. You will work with stakeholders across chemistry, AI, hardware, and software to define the appropriate scope for the robotic systems that you’ll design and own.

• Plan from a 10,000ft view. You will take initiative to understand the risk profile of the larger organization, and prioritize your work - and its scope - accordingly. Comfort with questioning assumptions and adopting a team mindset is critical.

• Design and build mechanisms, end effectors, workcells, and custom machines for automating scientific workflows.

• Build physical data collection systems for use by chemists in the lab.

• Manage vendors and leverage outside design resources when necessary, practical, or expedient.

• Help define the tone for a high agency high performance engineering culture.

What We’re Looking For

• 7+ years of cradle to grave hardware design experience, preferably across multiple engineering domains. Robotics specific experience is nice-to-have but not strictly necessary.

• Hands-on mechanical intuition. You are comfortable building and working in the physical world, and have a strong sense of what will work and what won’t.

• A demonstrated track record of making complex hardware projects come to life and work in the real world.

• Strong debugging skills with integrated electrical/mechanical/software systems.

• Exceptional ability to use digital and physical tools to accelerate your work and improve its quality. FEA, Claude/Codex, CAD, 3D printing, laser cutting, sheetmetal bending, mill, lathe, etc.

• Strong mechanical design and engineering fundamentals. Functional tolerance stackups, material properties, statics, dynamics, freebody diagrams, kinematic constraints, actuator selection/sizing, thermals, electronics packaging, etc.

• Experience managing and leveraging vendors. Your attention to detail will drive clear communication about costs, lead times, and bottlenecks, both internally and externally.

• Design for assembly and design for manufacturing fundamentals. Direct experience with various manufacturing methods and a sense of their strengths and limitations (CNC machining, sheetmetal, overmolding, casting, injection molding, etc.)

• High capacity for working in ambiguous environments and effectively adding structure when there’s not a clear path forward.

Especially Useful Experience

• Robotics specific hardware experience. Actuator selection/sizing/implementation, mechanism design, sensor selection and integration, communication protocol trade-offs, deep knowledge of OTS robotics hardware, firmware, etc.

• Knowledge of strengths and limitations of AI trained policies, traditional automation solutions, and experience factoring tasks and altering physical environments to make automation solutions successful.

• Demonstrated ability to integrate software learnings into hardware design, and hardware learnings into software architecture choices.

• Experience building hardware and/or software for physical AI data collection (tele-op, UMI, kinesthetic teaching, etc.)

• Experience building and managing data collection efforts

• Working knowledge of electronics and designing basic custom PCBs.

• Prior startup experience and an excitement for working on small teams.

• Experience with design for reliability and functional safety (FMEA, HIRA/HAZOP, etc)

• Accelerated lifecycle testing

• Organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, biotech experience, etc

Equal Employment Opportunity Warp is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and related medical conditions), gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, reproductive health decision-making, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Reasonable Accommodations Warp provides reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants with disabilities in accordance with applicable law. If you need an accommodation during the application or interview process, please contact [email protected]

Fair Chance Hiring Warp considers qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in accordance with the California Fair Chance Act and other applicable laws.

General Notice This job posting describes the position generally and does not constitute an offer of employment or an employment contract.