Founding Mechanical Design Engineer

Founding Mechanical Design Engineer

Starpilot · Brooklyn, NY · Full-time, on-site

About Starpilot

Starpilot is a venture-backed startup building new forms of precision robotics for high-demand industrial applications such as wire harnessing & recycling. We are build hardware for data-collection and deployment, with the goal of realizing real robots delivering real results for real people. We design, machine, and iterate our core products in-house across our Brooklyn & Global offices.

We're a small team of engineers and PhD researchers (Columbia, MIT Media Lab, Johns Hopkins) backed by several of the largest VCs in industry (CIV) & led by repeat serial entrepreneurs. We prioritize deployment realities over simulation or theory, and we’re seeking intellectually curious new members capable of highspeed iteration to join our founding team.

The Role

You'll design and build the industrial-grade manipulators at the heart of everything we do; the customized end effectors and compliant mechanisms that let our robots handle contact-rich tasks. You'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with our PhD research team, building prototypes, final deployed hardware, and data collection devices.

Responsibilities

• Rapidly prototype and iterate on novel robot manipulation hardware using first-principles engineering, creative problem solving, and hands-on experimentation.
• Manufacture, assemble, and integrate mechanical prototypes directly onto live robotic hardware in our Brooklyn lab.
• Use software and the latest AI tools to interface with and control robotic hardware.
• Validate design requirements, translating functional objectives (cycle time, force limits, compliance, repeatability) into concrete mechanical specifications and performance targets.
• Develop and execute rigorous functional tests to validate new hardware designs.
• Evaluate prototypes on real-world manipulation tasks, identify failure modes and design limitations, and iterate rapidly.
• Work across mechanical, electrical, and software interfaces to debug hardware and take new robotic systems from concept to working prototype.

Qualifications

• B.S. in Mechanical Engineering or a closely related field.
• Strong hands-on experience designing, building, and iterating mechanical or robotic hardware.
• Exceptional hardware debugging and problem-solving instincts: you find the failure mode before it finds you.
• Strong fundamentals in mechanical design, kinematics, mechanisms, and engineering analysis.
• Fluency with CAD and rapid prototyping, including machining, 3D printing, or other fabrication processes you've used to make real parts.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating thoughtful, rigorous mechanical design and physical prototyping work (personal projects, research hardware, and competition robots all count).
• Preferably, experience shipping hardware for highly automated industrial systems or hardware for real deployed robots.
• Can move quickly, operate in a fast pace start-up environment, and begin working onsite at our Brooklyn office asap.

What We're Looking For

We want an engineer who enjoys building things, breaking them, figuring out why they failed, and making them better. The ideal candidate is deeply hands-on, moves quickly, and is equally comfortable thinking through a mechanism on paper, modeling it in CAD, fabricating, and testing it on real robots.

The ideal candidate has expertise in mechanism design, but also a solid understanding of fundamental topics in robotics, control, and artificial intelligence. Robotics is a system science, we are looking for a well-rounded engineer to lead our mechanical design and deliver real results by whatever means necessary.