Product Design & HRI Engineer, Robotics Hardware

About Us

Field AI is transforming how robots interact with the real world. We are building risk-aware, reliable, and field-ready AI systems that address the most complex challenges in robotics, unlocking the full potential of embodied intelligence. We go beyond typical data-driven approaches or pure transformer-based architectures, and are charting a new course, with already-globally-deployed solutions delivering real-world results and rapidly improving models through real-field applications.

In this role you will develop hardware that shapes how our robotic systems look, feel, and sound. This spans audio and visual systems, industrial design, and robotic expressiveness and motion. Within audio and visual systems, you will select and integrate displays, speakers, and microphones. Within industrial design, you will work on form and CMF (color, material, finish). You will also help define robot motion and expressiveness.

As part of the Hardware department this role will involve significant hands-on work bringing up and designing electromechanical elements.

You will coordinate with Product and UI/UX to identify what interactions and experiences are needed. Then work with Electrical, Mechanical, and Computing hardware personnel to implement them. Solutions must balance performance, durability, manufacturability, and SWaP (size, weight, power) constraints across environments ranging from rugged industrial sites to commercial settings with the general public.

• Form & Aesthetics: Drive form, shape, and CMF (color/material/finish) decisions that define how the robot looks and feels.
• Interaction & Expressiveness: Shape how people see, hear, and interact with the robot across displays, audio, and movement, adapting choices for industrial versus commercial and public settings.
• Cross-Team
  
  Collaboration:
  
  Partner with hardware groups such as Electrical, Mechanical, and Computing, and company-wide groups such as Product, UX, and Field Ops, since many parts are interrelated.

• Display & Lighting Selection: Drive selection and programming of screens (OLED, LCD, LED), LED strips, and multicolor lighting elements such as ambient lighting, and expressive displays, including novel concepts like projection interfaces.
• Durability & Readability: Ensure display and lighting durability (drop/impact resistance) and outdoor daylight readability across harsh field conditions.
• SWaP Tradeoffs: Own SWaP tradeoffs for all display and lighting components as they’re integrated into the payload.
• Firmware & Validation: Write scripts to validate display boot-up, onboard compute connectivity, and correct rendering, catching crashes before field deployment.

• Speaker & Microphone Selection: Select, spec, and program speakers and microphones for target use cases, balancing audio I/O needs with the robot’s form factor.
• Acoustic Performance Evaluation: Evaluate loudness, voice pickup, and acoustic performance across environments to ensure clear two-way communication in the field.
• SWaP Tradeoffs: Balance size, weight, and power (SWaP) tradeoffs for audio components against other system constraints and payload budgets.

• Education: B.S., M.S., or equivalent experience in Human-Robot Interaction, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical/Industrial Design, or a related field.
• Experience Level: Minimum of 3+ years of hands-on experience working on industrial/product design, audio-visual systems, or robotics. We welcome candidates across mid-level to senior and staff levels.
• AV Hardware Selection: Experience selecting and specifying speakers, microphones, displays (OLED/LCD/LED), and lighting elements for hardware products.
• SWaP & Systems Integration: Comfort balancing size, weight, and power tradeoffs across audio-visual and electromechanical system integration.
• Firmware & Validation: Experience writing scripts or tools to validate display boot-up, rendering, and connectivity, catching failures before field deployment.
• Industrial Design Skillset: Experience with industrial design work, including form, shape, and CMF…