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Mechanical Design Engineer, Plastics

Mind Robotics· Hardware Engineering
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Palo AltoFull-timePosted 3w ago

About the role

Mechanical design of A-surface plastic components for a robotics platform, from concept to production tooling, with emphasis on cosmetic surfaces, material selection, tolerances, and injection-molding processes.

Responsibilities

  • Own the mechanical design of A-surface plastic components for the robot — covers, skins, shrouds, bezels, and cosmetic enclosures — from industrial design intent through production tooling.
  • Develop Class-A surfaces and translate ID surfacing into manufacturable parts, holding gap-and-flush, parting line, draft, and aesthetic intent across the full assembly.
  • Select polymers and processes across the cosmetic stack: ABS, PC, PC/ABS, PA and glass-filled grades, TPU/TPE, and specialty resins — balancing appearance, impact and creep behavior, chemical and UV resistance, flammability, and cost.
  • Define and own GD&T, tolerance stack-ups, and datum schemes across multi-part plastic assemblies and their interfaces to structures, actuators, and electronics.
  • Drive DFM and DFA for injection molding, insert molding, overmolding, and secondary operations — gate and ejector strategy, wall thickness, ribbing and boss design, warp and sink mitigation, and shutoff design.
  • Own cosmetic specification: textures, gloss levels, color matching, painting, plating, laser etching, and in-mold decoration, plus defect standards and limit samples.
  • Work directly with tool shops, molders, and CMs through tool kickoff, T0/T1 sampling, tuning, and PPAP — reviewing mold flow, tool design, and first-shot parts, and driving corrective action.
  • Build and test prototypes using 3D printing, urethane casting, CNC, and soft tooling, then validate with drop, structural, and environmental testing.

Qualifications

  • Exceptional mechanical intuition. Understands how polymers flow, shrink, warp, and fail — and can predict it before tooling.
  • 5+ years designing injection-molded plastic parts for high-volume consumer, automotive, or robotics products, with parts taken from CAD through production tooling.
  • Deep, hands-on knowledge of polymer materials science: resin families, fillers and additives, anisotropy, moisture sensitivity, and how process conditions change part behavior.
  • Fluent in GD&T (ASME Y14.5 or ISO GPS) and tolerance analysis, including worst-case and statistical stack-ups on compliant plastic parts.
  • Proven experience owning cosmetic A-surface parts and defending appearance standards with vendors.
  • Strong surfacing skills in SolidWorks, CATIA, NX, Creo, or similar; comfort reading mold flow results and tool drawings.
  • Comfortable with ambiguity, moves fast, and curious about how the whole system works.

Skills

Required:Mechanical design and CADPolymer materials science
Last updated Sep 30, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Mind Robotics

Physical AI for the Real World

Mind Robotics is building intelligent robotics for industrial deployment. We believe the fastest path to broadly capable robots is through clearly defined, high-impact environments. We are starting where the need is most.

roboticsindustrial deploymentPhysical AImanufacturing
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