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Mechanical Engineer, Robotics Hardware Intern

FieldAI· Internships – Hardware Engineering / Internship / On-site
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Boston, MA$28/hr - $63/hrInternPosted 2w ago

About the role

Field AI is building risk-aware, reliable, and field-ready AI systems for autonomous robotics. The Mechanical Engineer Intern on the Hardware Team contributes to designing and implementing mechanical systems that house sensing and compute platforms for field deployment, collaborating across hardware domains.

Responsibilities

  • 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.

Qualifications

  • 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.

Skills

Required:Mechanical designCAD (SolidWorks)Finite Element Analysis (FEA)Thermal managementManufacturing awarenessSystems integrationLab equipment handling

Benefits

  • Competitive internship experience in a fast-moving robotics hardware team.
  • Exposure to end-to-end hardware development from design to field deployment.
Last updated Oct 22, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About FieldAI

Robot intelligence built for the real-world.

FieldAI is the leader in deploying general-purpose robots in unstructured environments, providing a universal brain that works across many robots, and many tasks.

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