Mechanical Engineering Manager

Senior/Staff Mechanical Engineering Manager

Andromeda Robotics is an ambitious social robotics company with offices in Melbourne and San Francisco, dedicated to creating robots that seamlessly and intelligently interact with the human world. Our first robot, Abi, is a testament to this vision: a custom-built platform designed from the ground up to be a helpful aid and intuitive partner in aged care homes. We are a passionate, collaborative team of engineers who solve some of the most challenging problems in AI and robotics.

Our values include empathy, play, never settling, tenacity, and unity.

The role of Senior/Staff Mechanical Engineering Manager involves owning the mechanical design and development of Abi, including requirements gathering, concept exploration, mechanical/electrical prototyping, detailed design, and production validation. You will own the overall mechanical vision for Abi and set the direction for her structural, thermal, and actuation systems. You'll work hands-on across CAD, prototyping, and testing, collaborating closely with partner teams including Electrical, Audio, Computer Vision, Simulation, ML/AI, Safety/Reliability, Design, and Manufacturing. You will ensure every design by you and your team meets high standards for performance, reliability, and manufacturability.

In addition to your individual contributor work, you will lead the Mechanical Engineering team, setting the team's roadmap and representing the team and its designs with executives and other stakeholders. You'll mentor and review the work of junior engineers, lead design reviews, and refine our development processes as we scale. This role requires good communication skills, leadership and management expertise, strategic thinking and meticulous team execution, and driving hardware that performs under real-world conditions, at scale. This role is an incredibly exciting opportunity for you to help shape a product that will have a very positive impact on some of the most vulnerable people in our communities, helping us replace a billion hours of loneliness with companionship.

Your impact will include leading a team of Mechanical Engineers, overseeing their day-to-day workflow and empowering them to deliver mission-critical outcomes; setting the roadmap for the Mechanical Engineering team and ensuring the team's execution against aggressive short-, medium-, and long-term goals; collaborating with executives and leadership on overall mechanical vision and roadmap for Abi; owning Abi's mechanical design from concept to production, delivering robust, reliable systems that power Abi's performance; creating and maintaining mechanical designs and technical drawings in CAD (Onshape); producing clear manufacturing documentation and managing BOMs and product data in Odoo ERP; leading mechanical improvements to the Abi platform, developing prototypes with the assistance of electrical, software, and industrial design, with an eye towards multiple investigations for down-select and rapid iteration rather than aiming to be "perfect" with your first design; integrating motors, sensors, and wiring within tight constraints, without compromising form or function; designing joints, mechanisms, and transmissions optimized for mass, stiffness, and cost to ensure smooth, intuitive movement; iterating rapidly through testing, simulation, and reviews to refine real-world performance at every stage; developing documentation, test protocols, and assembly guides to enable seamless scale-up into manufacturing; collaborating with Customer Success and Software teams to observe usage, prioritize fixes, and close the loop on design changes; and mentoring junior engineers and fostering a culture of technical excellence and collaboration.