Forward Deploy Electrical Engineer
Posted Updated
About the role
You’ll work directly with our three-person engineering team, including both founders, to take customer automation projects from requirements to working machines. As a Forward Deploy Electrical Engineer, you’ll own electrical and automation design, build practical solutions across mechanical and electrical boundaries, write application code, and commission deployments on the factory floor.
You’ll turn ambiguous customer requirements into a dependable system, make architecture and component tradeoffs, and carry your decisions through build, testing, deployment, and handoff. Your depth should be in electrical engineering and automation, with the ability to handle practical mechanical integration such as mounts, brackets, fixtures, component placement, and equipment adaptation. You’ll work across disciplines and turn field experience into better product behavior, reusable designs, and clearer documentation.
Gardena, CA • Full-time • Approximately 75% travel to customer sites. When not traveling, you’ll work with the team in our Gardena office.
What you’ll build
- Design electrical schematics, control-panel layouts, wiring diagrams, and BOMs for customer machines, from 24 VDC I/O to 480 V three-phase loads.
- Build and integrate panels, sensors, actuators, motors, drives, remote I/O, HMIs, and safety circuits into working systems.
- Write and test Python-based controls applications for pilots and deployments in Neuron’s development environment.
- Commission systems at customer sites through point-to-point checkout, I/O validation, tuning, failure testing, and safety verification.
- Troubleshoot electrical, communications, and application issues at the machine, using instruments and software diagnostics to isolate root causes.
- Own the customer handoff with clear operating documentation, troubleshooting guidance, and communication about deployment progress and unresolved issues.
- Improve Cortex and Synapse by reproducing field issues, sharing actionable findings with engineering, and building reusable test systems and reference designs.
What you’ve already proven
- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Controls Engineering, Automation Engineering, Mechatronics, Robotics, or Mechanical Engineering with a controls emphasis.
- You’ve independently owned professional automation projects from requirements and architecture through physical build, programming, integration, commissioning, and handoff. You can explain your decisions, tradeoffs, failures, and the results you delivered.
- You’ve personally designed and physically built a working control system, including electrical schematics, a panel, field wiring, and controller application code. You can distinguish your own work from the team’s contribution.
- You can explain an integration or commissioning problem you resolved, the measurements you used, and how you verified the fix.
- Practical electrical fundamentals across conductor sizing, protection, motors, grounding, shielding, and noise troubleshooting, along with experience integrating industrial networks, drives, sensors, and safety circuits.
- You can write and debug application code and use Python for automation, testing, or controls work.
- You communicate clearly with customers, take ownership when requirements are incomplete, and know when to bring a technical issue back to the engineering team.
- You can travel approximately 75% of the time and work from Gardena when not at customer sites.
What gets you here faster
- Ownership of customer deployments from initial requirements and electrical design through build, commissioning, and handoff.
- Industrial network, servo, coordinated-motion, or robotics integration experience.
- Panel certification or machine safety experience, including UL 508A, NFPA 79, or ISO 13849.