About Kovari
Kovari develops frontier technology to transform physical businesses. We partner with established operators to change how they run, and we build and operate businesses of our own through our subsidiaries.
We are a small team of builders, operators, and researchers. We deploy on site, alongside the businesses we serve, and iterate in the field. We have raised over $6M from leading investors.
We are based in San Francisco and work in person.
The Role
As a Senior Electrical Engineer, you will own electrical subsystems of our robots end to end, from concept through production, spanning power architecture and motor drives to sensors, harnesses, and embedded integration. You make architecture and design tradeoffs, design it, build it, bring it up, and debug it on robots running in live operations.
This is not a bench role. Your systems face real constraints: high duty cycles, continuous charging and discharging, noisy environments, and hardware that has to survive the field.
What You'll Do
Own electrical architecture and subsystem design from concept through production: power distribution, battery systems and BMS, charging, protection
Select, integrate, and tune motor controllers and drives, making tradeoffs across performance, reliability, and manufacturability
Design schematics and PCBs for power, sensing, and I/O, and lead PCB bring-up
Integrate sensors: cameras, IMUs, encoders, force/torque, proximity
Design and build wiring harnesses for reliability, serviceability, and robust power delivery
Work with embedded and controls on firmware, comms buses (CAN, EtherCAT, RS-485), and bring-up
Debug electrical failures on deployed robots and drive fixes back into the design
Manage vendors and manufacturers for PCBs, harnesses, and custom assemblies, and mentor junior engineers
What You Bring
5+ years of relevant industry experience designing and shipping hardware
Strong fundamentals in power electronics, motor drives, and mixed-signal design
Track record owning electrical subsystems from concept through production
Schematic capture and PCB layout in Altium or KiCad
Experience with PCB bring-up, power, motor control, and embedded integration
Battery system experience: Li-ion packs, BMS, thermal and safety design
Harness design: connector selection, strain relief, routing, documentation
Hands-on skill: you solder, scope, and rework boards yourself
Experience making architecture and design tradeoffs, mentoring junior engineers, and working with vendors and manufacturers
A track record of hardware you've shipped and a portfolio of things you've built on your own time
Bias toward action: prototype fast, test early, fix what breaks
Values
Pace of learning trumps everything.
Relentless refinement of our craft.
Low ego, high ownership.
All-in on the mission. We work in person, and this isn't a 9-to-5.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of relevant industry experience designing and shipping hardware
- Strong fundamentals in power electronics, motor drives, and mixed-signal design
- Experience owning electrical subsystems from concept through production
- Schematic capture and PCB layout experience using Altium or KiCad
- Experience with PCB bring-up, power, motor control, and embedded integration
- Battery system experience with Li-ion packs, BMS, thermal design, and safety design
- Harness design experience, including connector selection, strain relief, routing, and documentation
- Hands-on ability to solder, use oscilloscopes, and rework boards
- Experience making architecture and design tradeoffs
- Experience mentoring junior engineers
- Experience working with vendors and manufacturers
- Track record of hardware shipped and a portfolio of independently built projects
- Willingness to work in person in San Francisco
What We Do
Kovari Industries is a venture-backed company that develops general-purpose robots for the hospitality industry to handle physical, repetitive work. They aim to marry deep commercial understanding with fast-paced innovation to create intelligent machines that move the economy. The company focuses on rapid iteration, engineering rigor, and deploying real machines into real environments to solve the last-mile problem of robot proliferation in businesses.
