Electrical Engineer, Embedded Hardware
Summary
Design and bring up embedded hardware for self-replicating machines, including mixed-signal interfaces, power sequencing, and signal integrity under real-world conditions.
The Mission
GRAM is a self-replication company creating machine labor for the physical economy.
Our first research frontier is self-preservation: the base case of physical self-replication. We are building a new class of machines called insectoids that can survive, coordinate, and recover without humans. We believe scalable machine labor requires more than single-agent task generality or machines shaped in our image.
About the role
You will own the low-voltage electrical architecture and embedded hardware connecting sensing, computation, communications, and control. The work spans sensor and compute selection, mixed-signal interfaces, network physical layers, custom interface and controller boards, connectors, harness drawings, grounding, shielding, electromagnetic compatibility, and board bring-up under real switching, vibration, and configuration changes.
Power Electronics owns high-current conversion, motor drives, pulsed EPM stages, protection, and energy interfaces. Embedded Software owns firmware, drivers, diagnostics, and update behavior. Robotics Systems owns subsystem selection and integration; State Estimation and Perception own the algorithms consuming sensor data; Mechanical owns physical packaging. You own the released electrical design and measured signal integrity connecting them.
What you will do
- Translate sensing, compute, communications, calibration, diagnostic, environmental, and fault requirements into electrical architectures, interface specifications, signal budgets, and verification plans.
- Select and integrate cameras, inertial sensors, encoders, force or torque sensors, ranging sensors, embedded compute, timing devices, and communication components against measured system requirements.
- Design and release mixed-signal, digital, sensor-interface, communication, power-sequencing, and controller-support circuitry with controlled schematics, PCB layouts, bills of material, and revision history.
- Own connector selection, pinouts, cable and harness drawings, shielding, grounding, separation, derating, strain relief, service loops, continuity requirements, and electrical acceptance criteria.
- Bring up boards, sensors, compute, and networks using oscilloscopes, logic and bus analyzers, spectrum or network instrumentation, programmable supplies, thermal measurements, and automated acquisition.
- Characterize signal integrity, noise, clock and time-distribution behavior, communication margin, startup and brownout behavior, grounding, emissions susceptibility, and injected faults on representative assemblies.
- Carry embedded hardware through design review, supplier fabrication, inspection, assembly, programming support, calibration, machine integration, manufacturing test, nonconformance closure, and verified release.
Minimum qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Released and brought up embedded electronics for a robot, vehicle, instrument, industrial machine, or comparable electromechanical product using controlled schematics, PCB layouts, bills of material, and revisions.
- Designed mixed-signal or digital interfaces involving sensors, embedded compute, clocks, converters, communication physical layers, protection, filtering, and power sequencing.
- Produced connector pinouts and cable or harness documentation, then verified continuity, grounding, shielding, signal integrity, communication margin, or electromagnetic performance on assembled hardware.
- Closed an electrical integration failure by reproducing it with bench instrumentation, identifying the physical or circuit-level root cause, releasing a correction, and demonstrating the fix through repeated test.
Preferred experience
- Robotics sensors, embedded compute, CAN, EtherCAT, Ethernet, MIPI, USB, LVDS, precision analog acquisition, or distributed time synchronization.
- High-reliability harnessing, grounding and shielding, EMI or EMC testing, environmental qualification, or electrically noisy motion systems.
- Hardware-in-the-loop systems, production programming and calibration, automated board test, supplier technical review, or low-volume complex electromechanical builds.
Working at GRAM
This role is based on-site in El Segundo. Work moves among schematic and layout review, harness tables, bench bring-up, sensor calibration, robot integration, environmental testing, and failure teardown. You will work directly with power-electronics, embedded-software, mechanical, controls, perception, state-estimation, systems, manufacturing, reliability, and safety engineers.
Interview Process
After submitting your application, we review your portfolio and any exceptional work you've shipped. If your application demonstrates the caliber we seek, you'll enter our interview process, which is designed for speed and substance. We aim to complete it within one week from start to finish.
Trust in the Process
GRAM expects deep trust and ownership from its people, and we begin by extending the same to candidates. We treat your information, prior work, and conversations with discretion.