Sensor Engineer (Wearables)
San Francisco, CAFull-time$150–225K/yrSeen todayStill listed today
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At a glance
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Job overview
Preload builds wearable multimodal sensors and datasets for robotics teams. The Sensor Engineer will design and iterate tactile, EMG, and other wearable sensors, developing hardware and firmware for data capture and adapting devices to different workflows. The role includes validating signal quality, durability, and comfort, and working with suppliers and manufacturers to scale builds. The team is in person in San Francisco.
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 You'll design and iterate the wearable sensors at the heart of our stack, making them reliable, comfortable, and cheap enough to deploy at scale across very different workflows, from surgery to industrial tasks. What you'll do
- Design, prototype, and iterate tactile, EMG, and other wearable sensors
- Develop analog front-ends, PCBs, and embedded firmware for data capture
- Optimize sensors for specific workflows (e.g. surgical vs. field settings)
- Characterize and validate signal quality, durability, and comfort
- Work with suppliers and manufacturers to move from prototype to scalable builds
What we're looking for
- 2+ years designing sensor hardware, wearables, or biosignal acquisition systems
- Experience with PCB design, analog/mixed-signal circuits, and embedded C
- Comfortable going from bench prototype to field-ready device fast
- Experience with EMG, tactile/force sensing, or flexible electronics is a plus
- Background in EE, BME, mechanical, or neuroengineering is a plus
Why join Early, in-person team in San Francisco. You'll own the hardware that everything else is built on.
How this job compares
Set against the 2,924 open Hardware Engineer jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 10, 2026.
- Pay
- This posting$150–225K/yr
- California median$146–215K/yr944 salary ranges
- US median$132–204K/yr2,199 salary ranges
This range's midpoint, $188K, is 4% above the California median midpoint ($180K) — in the middle half of Hardware Engineer salary ranges in California.
- Openings
- Olive Jobs lists 1,221 open Hardware Engineer jobs in California and 2,924 across the US. 1% 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 Hardware Engineer postings that state a minimum ask for (median 5 years, across 2,422 postings).
- Education
- 1,584 of the 2,924 open Hardware Engineer jobs (54%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.
Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 10, 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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