Manufacturing Engineer, Motors & Actuators

About the Team

Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives.

About the Role

We are seeking Manufacturing Engineers to lead the development of processes, tooling, and prototype builds for custom motors and actuators. You will own a primary area as a Stator Process / Manufacturing Engineer, Tooling / Fixture Engineer, or Prototype Manufacturing Engineer, taking that work from early development through validation and repeatable execution in close partnership with mechanical, electromagnetic, electrical, test, quality, and supplier teams.

These roles focus on the development, integration, and validation of electromechanical manufacturing capabilities, including stator winding processes, assembly and inspection tooling, and actuator prototype builds. You will help translate engineering designs into reliable hardware while establishing scalable processes, equipment, and build practices for future robotic platforms.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person presence 5 days a week.

In this role, you will

Each opening focuses on one of the three specialties below, with shared responsibility for reliable processes and hardware.

• Stator Process / Manufacturing: develop and validate stacking, winding, termination, and potting processes. Establish process parameters, work instructions, and defect controls that produce consistent results across trained operators.

• Tooling / Fixture: design and deliver winding tools, assembly fixtures, inspection gauges, and bench equipment, from CAD and drawings through fabrication, commissioning, and troubleshooting. Improve setup time, labor, and repeatability.

• Prototype Manufacturing: plan and execute builds of existing actuator designs, from parts readiness and work instructions through inspection, approved rework, and delivery of complete actuator assemblies ready for robot integration. Resolve supplier and process issues, track failed parts, and use labor and yield data to improve subsequent builds.

• Integrate and troubleshoot equipment within your specialty, working through operator workflow, material flow, and controls or test interfaces.

• Resolve defects and bottlenecks through measurements and controlled trials. Demonstrate improvements in build time, repeatability, yield, and quality against defined acceptance criteria.

• Release clear process and tooling documentation, maintain revisions, and train technicians and operators to reproduce successful results.

• Work with mechanical designers to improve manufacturability while preserving approved magnetic, electrical, and safety requirements. Own the tooling designs and drawings needed to build and inspect the hardware, and coordinate product geometry, tolerance, and drawing changes with the product-design owner.

You might thrive in this role if you

• Have personally developed, built, or improved manufacturing processes, tooling, or electromechanical assemblies, and can explain the engineering decisions and results you owned.

• Move comfortably between hands-on troubleshooting, technical analysis, and working with technicians, operators, and suppliers.

• Use measurements and experiments to distinguish part variation, tooling problems, process settings, and operator effects.

• Choose equipment and automation with sound judgment about production rate, flexibility, cost, safety, and maintainability.

• Set practical build or development priorities, communicate blockers early, and work across design, controls, test, quality, and operations to resolve them.

Preferred qualifications

Relevant experience depends on the specialty:

• Stator Process / Manufacturing: stacking, winding, termination, potting or cure processes, and winding or handling tooling.

• Tooling / Fixture: fixture design, CAD and manufacturing drawings, metrology, equipment commissioning, and repeatability studies.

• Prototype Manufacturing: electromechanical assembly, build planning, parts readiness, inspection, rework, testing, and delivery of complete hardware builds.

• Motor, stator, actuator, or comparable electromechanical manufacturing experience.

• Automated assembly, inline inspection, end-of-line testing, or equipment fault recovery; familiarity with sensors, PLCs, I/O, or pneumatics.

• Process capability, measurement-system studies, and structured experiments.

• Interest in using AI to simplify repetitive engineering work, with sound review of its outputs.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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