The Senior Mechanical Design Engineer will design custom fixtures and hardware for electronics manufacturing, ensuring high performance in real production environments, and collaborate with various teams to support customer deployments.
Instrumental builds the manufacturing acceleration platform behind the world’s most complex electronics. We capture digital exhaust and engineering context from assembly lines—images, test logs, BOM data, performance, repair cycles—and our AI engines identify insights that are difficult or impossible for human engineers to find. We accelerate the companies building the AI era by improving manufacturing yield, throughput, and ramp. NVIDIA, Meta, L3Harris, and their manufacturing partners rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product introduction and production.
Instrumental is looking for a Senior Mechanical Design Engineer, Manufacturing Fixtures to design the custom fixtures, nests, test setups, and station hardware that make our technology work inside real electronics manufacturing environments.
This is not a generic product design role. We are looking for someone who has repeatedly built production-ready fixtures for electronics manufacturing and understands what happens when a design leaves CAD and enters a factory. You should have strong opinions about datums, repeatability, part protection, tolerancing, operator usability, quick-turn fabrication, and how to design fixtures that survive real line conditions.
In this role, you will work with Instrumental’s Hardware Design & Solutions team to support some of the world’s leading electronics companies. You will design solutions for products ranging from small wearables and consumer devices to industrial systems and high-performance compute hardware. Every customer and product is different, which means this role requires strong mechanical fundamentals, manufacturing judgment, and the ability to move quickly without sacrificing quality.
You will be joining a team that sits at the intersection of hardware, manufacturing, computer vision, and AI. Your work will directly affect how quickly customers can deploy Instrumental, capture useful data, and improve manufacturing outcomes.
• Has 8+ years of mechanical design experience, with significant experience designing fixtures, nests, test setups, or manufacturing aids for electronics production environments.
• Has designed hardware that was actually built, deployed, and used in manufacturing environments — not just modeled in CAD.
• Understands datum strategy, tolerancing, repeatability, operator usability, part protection, ESD, manufacturability, and quick-turn fabrication.
• Has experience working with electronics products such as consumer devices, wearables, PCBs, server hardware, industrial electronics, or other high-volume hardware products.
• Can anticipate fixture and production risks before they happen, including alignment drift, product damage, cosmetic issues, tolerance stackups, operator misuse, and throughput constraints.
• Is highly fluent in CAD and comfortable spending significant time designing, reviewing, and improving mechanical systems.
• Communicates design tradeoffs clearly to internal teammates, customers, and manufacturing partners.
• Thrives in fast-moving environments where timelines are compressed, requirements are imperfect, and the design still needs to work the first time.
• Design production-ready fixtures, nests, test setups, and station hardware for electronics manufacturing environments.
• Own mechanical design from requirements gathering through CAD, prototype, fabrication, review, iteration, and deployment support.
• Develop fixture concepts that control product position repeatably while protecting sensitive electronics, cosmetic surfaces, buttons, flexes, connectors, and other high-risk features.
• Apply strong datum strategy, tolerance analysis, material selection, and design-for-manufacturing judgment to ensure fixtures work reliably in production.
• Partner with Solutions Architects, Hardware Engineering, Operations, customers, and manufacturing partners to understand product requirements and factory constraints.
• Communicate design tradeoffs, risks, assumptions, and schedule implications clearly and proactively.
• Support quick-turn fabrication using processes such as CNC machining, 3D printing, laser cutting, sheet metal, and other appropriate manufacturing methods.
• Review and improve existing designs, identifying risks related to manufacturability, assembly, robustness, usability, and long-term line performance.
• Help Instrumental deliver high-quality deployments for customers building some of the world’s most complex electronics products.
• 8+ years of mechanical design experience, ideally in electronics manufacturing, fixture design, test hardware, automation, manufacturing engineering, or related roles.
• Deep experience designing fixtures, nests, test hardware, or production tooling for electronics products.
• CAD fluency in at least one professional 3D modeling tool; NX experience is a plus.
• Strong understanding of CNC machining and other quick-turn fabrication methods.
• Practical knowledge of GD&T, tolerance stackups, datum selection, material selection, and design for assembly.
• Experience designing for factory environments, including operator usability, robustness, ESD considerations, product protection, and throughput.
• Strong written and spoken English communication skills.
• Ability to travel occasionally to support customer deployments or manufacturing partners.
• Experience with optics, vision systems, AOI, camera stations, or inspection systems is a plus.
Instrumental offers competitive, location-based compensation. The following is a representative annual base salary range for the Bay Area: $150,000-$189,000.
Job leveling and salary opportunity are evaluated through our interview process—we review each applicant's experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities. Instrumental’s benefits include: Health, Vision, Dental, Public Transit/Commuter Plans, and Parental Leave.
At Instrumental, protecting company and customer information is a shared responsibility. All employees are expected to comply with company security and privacy policies and promptly report suspected security incidents or policy violations.
Instrumental Palo Alto, California, USA Office
909 Alma Street, Palo Alto, CA, United States, 94301
Similar Jobs
Fintech • Financial Services
Lead and grow complex commercial banking relationships for clients with $25M–$100M revenue. Advise senior leadership on structuring and renewing complex cash flow and real estate loans, coordinate cross-functional solutions, drive relationship planning and pipeline management, mentor junior colleagues, support business development, and ensure risk/compliance controls.
Fintech • Financial Services
Serve affluent consumer and business clients as a primary financial partner: acquire and deepen relationships, deliver multi-product banking, credit, investment and home lending solutions, coordinate referrals with internal partners, handle everyday banking service requests, ensure accurate documentation and compliance, and drive digital adoption and portfolio growth.
Fintech • Financial Services
Provide frontline banking service by building customer relationships, opening accounts, processing transactions, assisting with credit applications, and promoting banking products. Perform cash handling and teller activities, use digital tools to support customers, ensure compliance with risk controls, and coordinate referrals to licensed specialists.
What you need to know about the San Francisco Tech Scene
San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area attracts more startup funding than any other region in the world. Home to Stanford University and UC Berkeley, leading VC firms and several of the world’s most valuable companies, the Bay Area is the place to go for anyone looking to make it big in the tech industry. That said, San Francisco has a lot to offer beyond technology thanks to a thriving art and music scene, excellent food and a short drive to several of the country’s most beautiful recreational areas.
Key Facts About San Francisco Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 365,500; 13.9% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Google, Apple, Salesforce, Meta
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, fintech, consumer technology, software
- Funding Landscape: $50.5 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins
- Research Centers and Universities: Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; University of San Francisco; Santa Clara University; Ames Research Center; Center for AI Safety; California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
