Founding Mechanical Engineer

About Gradient Robotics

Gradient Robotics is building intelligent robots for data centers and factories. We believe the fastest practical path to capable general-purpose robotics is through industry deployment. We're here to change the world with robotics.

We own and build our full robotics stack — designing the hardware, building the software systems, training ML models, and manufacturing through a global supply chain — for world-class iteration speed, reliability, and scale.

We've built 3 generations of robots with a team of 7, backed by top-tier investors and working toward pilots with the world's largest data center builders. Our team created and built the best-selling open-source humanoid robots in the US at K-Scale Labs and worked on generations of foundation software for Tesla Optimus.

As a founding mechanical engineer at Gradient, you'll own the robot end-to-end: analyzing payload capacity and kinematics, designing mechanisms that are nimble and safe, and taking ideas from multi-physics simulation to the last deburred sheet-metal edge. Your work will define the robot — no amount of ML or electronics can replace innovative mechanical design.

• Make the hard design decisions we'll live with for weeks, sometimes months

• Work with electrical, software, and ML teams to build elegant and reliable robots

• Watch systems get better as your designs sharpen what's physically possible

• Mechanical Design: Precision mechanisms, structures, actuators, DFMA

• Analysis: Multi-physics simulation, FEA, tolerance stacks, vibration/thermal reasoning

• Build + Iteration: Prototyping, test rigs, failure analysis, rapid cycles from CAD to hardware

• Robotics Hardware: Hands-on work with sensors/actuators, tight packaging, field reliability

• Manufacturing Depth: Sheet metal, machining, castings/composites, vendor + supply chain fluency

• Shipped hardware that lives close to the edge — tight envelopes, harsh environments, real constraints

• Owned messy, ambiguous problems and turned them into robust, manufacturable designs

• Enjoyed being the person who gets the whole system to "click" physically

At Gradient, you'll make the hard design decisions we'll live with for weeks, sometimes months. You'll work with electrical, software, and ML to build elegant and reliable robots — and watch them get better as your designs sharpen what's physically possible. If that excites you, we should talk.