Mechanical Engineer, Robotics Hardware – Part-Time Internship

Structures: Design and model mechanical structures including external enclosures, internal compute frames, and load-bearing chassis.

Mounts: Design and validate robust sensor mounts, payload attachment points, and mechanical interfaces.

Ingress Protection: Implement IP-rated solutions with gaskets, seals, membranes, and coatings to meet water/dust ingress standards.

Thermal Management: Incorporate thermal mitigation strategies such as fans, heat sinks, conductive paths, and airflow guides.

Mass & Volume Budgets: Ensure adherence to payload constraints, including tight volumetric envelopes and weight limitations.

CAD & Simulation: Build detailed SolidWorks CAD assemblies. Run FEA and thermal simulations to validate strength, durability, and heat dissipation.

Material & Component Selection: Choose materials and components to meet mass, strength, thermal, and manufacturability constraints. Design for Production: Apply DFM, DFA, DFS principles throughout the design lifecycle.

System Testing: Conduct mechanical load testing (shock, vibration), thermal validation, ingress tests, and sensor alignment assessments.

Prototyping: Rapidly iterate on prototypes for fit checks, thermal evaluations, and integration trials.

Documentation & Budgets: Generate mechanical drawings, GD&T annotations, BOMs, and assembly instructions for fabrication and QA. Manage weight, volume, and thermal budgets.

Build: Work with vendors and contract manufacturers to procure mechanical hardware. Develop QA checks for incoming units. Support payload integration and scaling.

Debug: Investigate mechanical failures, deformation, and environmental weaknesses during testing and deployments.

Monitor: Develop protocols for monitoring the system mechanical health and loads.

Education: Current student pursuing a B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, or related field.

CAD Expertise: Proficient with SolidWorks or equivalent mechanical CAD platforms.

Thermal & Structural Analysis: Familiarity with FEA and thermal modeling tools.

Field-Ready Design: Experience designing hardware that survives vibration, shock, thermal cycling, and environmental exposure.

Manufacturing Knowledge: Experience designing for CNC, sheet metal, additive manufacturing, and assembly workflows.

Mechanical Systems Integration: Experience working across teams to integrate mechanical systems with compute, sensors, and power electronics.

Lab Skills: Comfort with mechanical debugging, thermal test setups, vibration tables, and ingress testing.

Cross Functional Robotic Skills: Ability to contribute electrical, sensing, and embedded computing work to deliver robust integrated systems.

Scaling: Experience taking systems from prototype to large scale production.

Field Environments: Experience developing systems for harsh field environments.

Deployed Robotics: Experience working on robotics deployed in real world settings such as autonomous vehicles, drones, or ruggedized robots.

Systems Level Robotics: Fluency across mechanical, electrical, and software systems.

Reliability Engineering: Experience designing to meet IP ratings, MIL-STD, or equivalent ruggedness standards.