Electrical Design Engineer, Tactile Sensing

Posted 5 Days Ago
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Palo Alto, CA, USA
In-Office
Senior level
Artificial Intelligence • Robotics • Industrial • Manufacturing
The Role
Design and own tactile sensor electronics from transducer interface through digitization to deliver synchronized, low-noise, time-stamped data. Tasks include analog front-end and ADC selection, multiplexing and scanning architectures, high-density flex/rigid-flex PCB design, EMI/ESD mitigation, electrical characterization and bench bring-up, firmware-adjacent driver work, and scaling designs for volume manufacturing while collaborating with mechanical, firmware, controls, and ML teams.
Summary Generated by Built In
Responsibilities
  • Own the tactile sensor stack electrically — from transducer interface and analog front-end through signal conditioning, digitization, and delivery of clean, time-stamped data to downstream compute.

  • Design low-noise analog front-ends for high-channel-count tactile arrays across one or more modalities (capacitive, resistive/piezoresistive, magnetic, optical, piezoelectric, MEMS/barometric), including amplification, filtering, ADC selection, and calibration strategy.

  • Architect multiplexing and scanning schemes for dense taxel arrays, including crosstalk mitigation, drive/sense electrode design, and trade-offs between spatial resolution, sample rate, and power.

  • Design high-density flex, rigid-flex, and ultra-compact PCBs for volume-constrained, cable-routed assemblies — fingertips, palms, gripper surfaces, and data collection gloves.

  • Deliver deterministic, tightly synchronized sampling: design clocking, triggering, and timestamping architectures that meet sub-millisecond synchronization requirements with the robot's real-time actuator bus and ML data collection pipelines.

  • Ensure EMI/ESD robustness — shielding, grounding, and filtering strategies for sensors operating millimeters from motors and power electronics in factory environments.

  • Characterize sensor electrical performance — noise floor, SNR, bandwidth, drift, hysteresis, temperature sensitivity — and build the electrical side of characterization rigs alongside mechanical ground-truth fixtures.

  • Bring up boards hands-on: schematic capture, layout review, first-article debug, firmware-adjacent driver and calibration work in collaboration with the firmware team.

  • Contribute to DFM/DFA so sensor electronics scale from low-volume prototypes to high-volume production; work with PCB fabricators, assembly houses, and contract manufacturers to keep parts on spec and on time.

  • Collaborate cross-functionally with mechanical, firmware, controls, and ML teams to translate raw transducer signals into calibrated, usable manipulation feedback.

Qualifications
  • Exceptional analog and mixed-signal intuition. You understand noise sources, parasitics, and signal integrity instinctively.

  • 5+ years of experience (or equivalent "hard tech" projects) designing sensor electronics, analog front-ends, or high-channel-count data acquisition systems.

  • Direct experience with the readout electronics of at least one tactile or contact sensing modality — capacitive, resistive, optical/vision-based, magnetic, piezoelectric, MEMS, or barometric.

  • Strong low-noise analog design skills: instrumentation amplifiers, precision references, filter design, ADC architectures, and calibration techniques.

  • High proficiency in schematic capture and PCB layout (Altium or similar), including high-density flex and rigid-flex design.

  • Solid embedded systems fluency: SPI/I2C/UART and high-speed serial interfaces, MCU selection and bring-up, and enough firmware capability to debug your own boards.

  • Strong bench skills — oscilloscopes, LCR meters, spectrum/network analyzers — and a hands-on debugging approach with the ability to iterate quickly.

  • Experience designing for volume manufacturing and working with PCB fabs, assembly houses, and contract manufacturers.

  • You are comfortable with ambiguity, move fast, and have an "engineering curiosity" that drives you to understand how the entire system works, not just your part.

Bonus
  • PhD or research experience in tactile sensing, electronic skin, neuromorphic/event-based sensing, or contact-rich manipulation.

  • Experience with real-time industrial communication buses (EtherCAT, CAN-FD) and time synchronization protocols.

  • Prior work instrumenting wearables or data collection gloves, including tethered high-bandwidth acquisition systems.

  • DSP or ML-adjacent experience processing high-rate sensor streams into features or training data.

  • Prior work on humanoid hands, dexterous grippers, haptic devices, or prosthetics.

Skills Required

  • Exceptional analog and mixed-signal intuition (noise sources, parasitics, signal integrity).
  • 5+ years designing sensor electronics, analog front-ends, or high-channel-count data acquisition systems.
  • Direct experience with readout electronics of at least one tactile/contact sensing modality (capacitive, resistive/piezoresistive, optical, magnetic, piezoelectric, MEMS, barometric).
  • Strong low-noise analog design skills: instrumentation amplifiers, precision references, filter design, ADC architectures, calibration techniques.
  • High proficiency in schematic capture and PCB layout (Altium or similar), including high-density flex and rigid-flex design.
  • Embedded systems fluency: SPI/I2C/UART, high-speed serial interfaces, MCU selection and bring-up, firmware debugging of boards.
  • Strong bench skills with oscilloscopes, LCR meters, spectrum/network analyzers and hands-on board bring-up/debugging.
  • Experience designing for volume manufacturing and working with PCB fabs, assembly houses, and contract manufacturers.
  • Comfortable with ambiguity, fast-moving environments, and broad system-level engineering curiosity.
  • PhD or research experience in tactile sensing, electronic skin, neuromorphic/event-based sensing, or contact-rich manipulation.
  • Experience with real-time industrial communication buses and time synchronization protocols (EtherCAT, CAN-FD).
  • Prior work instrumenting wearables or data collection gloves and tethered high-bandwidth acquisition systems.
  • DSP or ML-adjacent experience processing high-rate sensor streams into features or training data.
  • Prior work on humanoid hands, dexterous grippers, haptic devices, or prosthetics.
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The Company
20 Employees
Year Founded: 2025

What We Do

Mind Robotics builds intelligent, AI-driven robotic systems for industrial deployment, focusing on creating collaborative platforms for manufacturing environments.

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