- Robot type
- Humanoid
- Location
- AustinTexasUSA
- Job type
- Hardware
- Posted
- Apr 24, 2026
Full-time
Principal Electrical Engineer - Compute and Sensing
Job description
Apptronik is a human-centered robotics company developing AI-powered robots to support humanity in every facet of life. Our flagship humanoid robot, Apollo, is built to collaborate thoughtfully with people, starting with critical industries such as manufacturing and logistics, with future applications in healthcare, the home, and beyond. We operate at the cutting edge of Applied AI, applying our expertise across the full robotics stack to solve some of society's most important problems. You will join a team dedicated to bringing Apollo to market at scale, tackling the complex challenges like safety, commercialization, and mass production to change the world for the better.
Job responsibilities
- Primary Architect: Own the end-to-end design of Apollo’s safe compute architecture. Select core processing elements (SoCs, FPGAs, MCUs) and design system-level redundancy to meet real-time performance requirements.
- High-Performance PCB Design: Lead the design and validation of custom carrier boards for high-performance modules (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson).
- Manufacturing & Reliability: Drive Design for Manufacturability (DFM) and Design for Reliability (DFR) for compute modules, ensuring they can withstand the high-vibration and dynamic thermal environments of a mobile…
- Multi-Modal Sensing: Define the electrical architecture for a full perception stack, including LiDAR, depth cameras, IMUs, and tactile sensors.
- Data Pipeline Optimization: Architect the high-bandwidth pipelines and synchronization protocols required for sensor fusion.
- Safety Architecture: Drive the physical and logical architecture decisions required to meet Functional Safety standards Fail-Safe Systems: Design hardware-level redundancy, fail-safe mechanisms, and Built-In Tests…
- Diagnostics: Implement robust hardware diagnostics to monitor the health of the compute and sensing backbone in real-time.
- Multi-Generational Roadmap: Define the long-term technical roadmap for Apollo’s compute and sensing evolution, identifying emerging technologies (e.g., new SoCs or sensor modalities) that will keep Apptronik at the…
Job requirements
- Expertise: * Proven track record of designing custom carrier boards for NVIDIA Jetson or similar high-end compute modules. Mastery of high-speed digital design (PCIe, DDR4/5, GMSL, 10GbE).
- Experience integrating multi-sensor suites with precise hardware-level time synchronization.
- Hands-on experience with Functional Safety architecture (ISO 26262 or equivalent).
- Tools: Proficiency with Altium Designer (or similar) and hardware simulation tools (SPICE, Ansys, or HyperLynx).
- Education: M.S. or Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
- Experience: 12+ years of experience in high-performance hardware design, with a focus on robotics, autonomous vehicles, or aerospace.
- Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer
- Must be able to lift 15 pounds at times