Mechanical / Soft-Goods Designer (Wearables)
San Francisco, CAFull-time$150–225K/yrSeen 1 day agoStill listed 1 day ago
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At a glance
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Job overview
Preload builds wearable multimodal systems that capture human interaction data for robotics teams. The Mechanical / Soft-Goods Designer will own the physical design of gloves and wearables, focusing on fit, comfort, durability, and ease of use across different hand sizes, settings, and users. The role involves integrating sensors into soft goods, rapid prototyping and testing, and working with suppliers and manufacturers to scale production.
Skills & qualifications
Skills
Qualifications
Full job description
About Preload Preload builds the data layer for physical AI. Robots learn mostly from video, but human interaction is much richer: touch, force, and muscle activity. We build a wearable multimodal stack (egocentric video, tactile gloves, EMG) to capture how people actually interact with the physical world, and turn it into datasets robotics teams can train on. We're a YC (F26) team of PhD founders from Johns Hopkins and Caltech with backgrounds at Neuralink, Paradromics, and other neurotech companies. The role Our gloves and wearables are only as good as the data they collect, and that depends on fit, comfort, durability, and how fast someone can put them on. You'll own the physical design of our wearables so they work for hours across many hand sizes, settings, and users, from surgeons to field workers. What you'll do
- Design and iterate tactile gloves and wearable sensor housings for fit, comfort, and durability
- Integrate sensors, flex circuits, and cabling into soft goods without hurting signal quality
- Make devices fast to put on, take off, clean, and maintain at scale
- Design for many hand sizes and different workflows (e.g. surgical vs. field settings)
- Prototype quickly, run fit and wear testing, and work with suppliers and manufacturers to scale builds
What we're looking for
- 2+ years designing wearables, soft goods, apparel, or consumer hardware
- Strong CAD skills and hands-on prototyping (sewing, patterning, 3D printing, molding)
- Experience integrating electronics into textiles or flexible products
- Experience with gloves, medical wearables, or sports/performance gear is a plus
- Familiarity with materials and manufacturing for soft goods is a plus
Why join Early, in-person team in San Francisco. You'll own the physical product that every data collector wears.
How this job compares
Set against the 560 open Mechanical Designer jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 12, 2026.
- Pay
- This posting$150–225K/yr
- US median$77–108K/yr213 salary ranges
This range's midpoint, $188K, is 103% above the US median midpoint ($92K) — in the top quarter of Mechanical Designer salary ranges across the US.
- Openings
- Olive Jobs lists 30 open Mechanical Designer jobs in California and 560 across the US. 3% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
- Experience
- This posting asks for at least 2 years of experience — less than three in four Mechanical Designer postings that state a minimum ask for (median 5 years, across 472 postings).
- Education
- 48 of the 560 open Mechanical Designer jobs (9%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.
Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 12, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.
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