Senior Mechanical Design Engineer, Manufacturing Fixtures

Location: Palo Alto, CA

Department: Sales

Location Type: HYBRID

Employment Type: FULL_TIME

• Design production-ready stations, including fixtures, optics, and mounting hardware for a wide range of electronics products.
• Own projects from customer requirements through concept development, CAD, prototyping, fabrication, validation, and deployment.
• Rapidly evaluate multiple design approaches and iterate quickly as product requirements evolve.
• Balance precision, manufacturability, robustness, operator usability, cost, and speed without overengineering.
• Work directly with customers, manufacturing engineers, technicians, suppliers, and internal teams to solve complex manufacturing problems.
• Partner with external fabrication vendors to deliver quick-turn prototypes and production hardware using CNC machining, sheet metal, 3D printing, laser cutting, and other fabrication methods.
• Identify manufacturing risks early and proactively drive solutions before they become production issues.
• Develop and continuously improve scalable design processes, documentation, and workflows that increase the speed, consistency, and quality of hardware deployments as the team expands.

• Has extensive experience, ideally 8+ years, designing fixtures, production tooling, test hardware, or manufacturing equipment for electronics manufacturing.
• Has designed hardware that has been built, deployed, and used successfully in production environments.
• Moves quickly without sacrificing engineering judgment.
• Enjoys solving many different mechanical problems rather than long cycles of design optimization.
• Is comfortable working with ambiguity and incomplete information and can make thoughtful engineering decisions without waiting for perfect requirements.
• Has hands-on experience working in factory environments and designing for the practical realities of production, including repeatability, operator usability, product protection, and throughput.
• Communicates clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders and can explain engineering tradeoffs effectively.
• Thrives with a high degree of autonomy, taking ownership of project timelines and proactively driving work from concept through deployment.

• Mechanical design experience supporting electronics manufacturing, NPI, manufacturing engineering, factory automation, or production tooling.
• Deep knowledge of fixture design, GD&T, tolerance stack-ups, datum strategy, material selection, and design for manufacturing.
• Strong CAD skills (NX preferred).
• Experience with CNC machining and rapid fabrication processes.
• Familiarity with consumer electronics, wearables, networking equipment, server hardware, AI infrastructure, or other high-volume electronics products.
• Experience working directly with contract manufacturers or production lines.
• Exposure to vision systems, optics, inspection equipment, or automated test systems is a plus.
• Ability to travel occasionally to customer sites.