Senior/Staff Mechanical Engineer, Factory Automation

 

About the Company

Our client is a rapidly growing advanced manufacturing company developing a new approach to how complex products are engineered, manufactured, and assembled. Their technology combines sophisticated mechanical engineering, automation, software, and digital manufacturing to enable highly flexible production across demanding industries including automotive, aerospace, and defense.

The company is building production systems designed to reduce the traditional dependence on fixed tooling and allow factories to rapidly adapt between different products and configurations. The environment is highly technical, hands-on, and fast-moving, with engineers given significant ownership over both the design and deployment of new manufacturing technology.

The Role

They are looking for a Senior/Staff Mechanical Engineer to take significant ownership of the mechanical design and deployment of factory automation systems.

This is a hands-on mechanical engineering role focused on building complex automation equipment from concept through deployment. You will work from ambiguous manufacturing and operational problems, determine the appropriate mechanical architecture, develop detailed designs, build and test prototypes, resolve integration issues, and ultimately help bring production equipment into operation.

The scope goes well beyond CAD and component design. You will be responsible for making system-level engineering decisions and balancing performance, reliability, manufacturability, cost, schedule, serviceability, and technical risk. You'll work closely with mechanical, electrical, controls, software, manufacturing, quality, supply chain, suppliers, and operations teams to turn new automation concepts into functioning production hardware.

The ideal candidate has independently taken complex mechanical systems from concept → architecture → detailed design → build → test → release → deployment, and is comfortable taking technical ownership when requirements are incomplete or evolving.

What You'll Own

• Lead the mechanical development of significant factory automation systems, from defining the initial problem and developing concepts through detailed design, integration, validation, release, and production deployment.
• Translate manufacturing and operational requirements into practical mechanical architectures, system requirements, interfaces, constraints, and acceptance criteria.
• Develop detailed mechanical designs using 3D CAD, engineering drawings, GD&T, tolerance analysis, engineering calculations, component selection, and bills of material.
• Design across a broad range of mechanical systems, including structures, mechanisms, precision motion systems, fluid systems, thermal systems, sealing, vacuum systems, enclosures, and machine integration.
• Make system-level engineering tradeoffs involving performance, reliability, safety, manufacturability, serviceability, cost, schedule, and technical risk.
• Build prototypes and work directly with technicians, manufacturing, and other engineers to integrate, test, troubleshoot, and iterate on mechanical equipment.
• Identify mechanical and integration risks early, determine the appropriate analysis or testing required, and drive issues through resolution rather than handing them off.
• Own complex technical problems within your systems and turn test results, failures, and lessons learned into durable design improvements.
• Work cross-functionally with electrical, controls, software, manufacturing, quality, supply chain, suppliers, and contract manufacturers to ensure mechanical systems are ready for production.
• Drive hardware through engineering release, procurement, manufacturing, validation, commissioning, and operational ramp, closing technical gaps along the way.
• Support investigations of deployed equipment and determine whether failures are isolated incidents or indicators of broader design or system-level problems.
• Contribute to reusable mechanical architectures, modular designs, engineering standards, and design practices that make future automation systems faster and more reliable to develop and deploy.
• Provide technical leadership through design reviews, engineering guidance, and mentorship to other mechanical engineers.
• Help identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, automate, and scale the development and deployment of factory automation hardware.

What You'll Need

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related engineering discipline.
• Demonstrated experience architecting and delivering complex mechanical systems from concept through detailed design, build, test, release, and deployment.
• Strong ownership of mechanical systems beyond individual components—you should be comfortable establishing technical direction and driving a project across multiple engineering and operational functions.
• Expert-level proficiency with 3D CAD, engineering drawings, GD&T, tolerance analysis, component selection, and design for manufacturability and assembly.
• Strong mechanical engineering fundamentals and the ability to apply them to unfamiliar or multidisciplinary problems.
• Experience turning ambiguous requirements or operational problems into practical mechanical designs.
• Hands-on experience prototyping, assembling, integrating, testing, troubleshooting, and iterating on mechanical equipment.
• Ability to make sound technical decisions with incomplete or changing information and understand the tradeoffs behind those decisions.
• Experience leading cross-functional technical work and communicating engineering decisions, risks, issues, and status clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience providing technical direction, conducting design reviews, or mentoring other engineers.
• Willingness and ability to work hands-on around industrial equipment and occasionally lift or carry equipment or components weighing up to approximately 25 lbs.
• Ability to lawfully access information and technology subject to U.S. export-control requirements.
• Ability to work fully on-site across office, laboratory, prototype, build, and production environments.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Siemens NX and Teamcenter.
• Experience working with industrial automation or other capital equipment, particularly industrial robotics, machine tools, welding systems, coating/plating systems, adhesive or bonding equipment, or additive manufacturing equipment.
• Experience designing precision mechanisms, motion systems, fluid systems, thermal systems, vacuum systems, structural assemblies, or industrial machine enclosures.
• Experience taking production hardware through engineering change control, configuration management, qualification, and release.
• Experience collaborating with suppliers and contract manufacturers on mechanical hardware.
• Experience developing modular or standardized automation platforms rather than one-off machines.
• Experience mentoring engineers or providing technical leadership across multidisciplinary engineering teams.
• Familiarity with tools such as Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Power BI, or Oracle.

Work Environment

This is an on-site, hands-on engineering position. The role spans traditional engineering work as well as laboratories, prototype areas, equipment builds, and active production environments.

 

Location: Los Angeles Metropolitan Area

 

You should be comfortable working around industrial machinery and environments that may involve elevated noise, metal powders, inert gases, lasers, chemicals, adhesives, ovens, robotic equipment, and high-power electrical systems. Appropriate PPE and environmental, health, and safety procedures are required.

Some schedule flexibility and occasional travel may be necessary during critical design builds, integration, testing, commissioning, or production ramp activities.

Compensation

The company is considering candidates at both the Senior and Staff Engineer levels, with compensation based on experience and level.

• Senior Engineer: $128,520 – $176,720 base salary
• Staff Engineer: $148,430 – $204,090 base salary
• Equity and performance-based incentive opportunities are also available.

The company offers comprehensive health and wellness benefits, paid time off and holidays, parental leave, retirement and insurance benefits, professional development support, and a collaborative, high-performance engineering environment.