Electrical Engineer (Early Career)

About the role

Electrical Engineer, Early Career (Embedded Systems & Tools)

Sunnyvale, CA (onsite) * Engineering * Full-time

About the role

The work at Noble Machines is a team sport. As an early-career Electrical Engineer, you'll design, build and bring up the embedded electronics and internal tools that keep our robots and our engineers moving. You'll work side by side with our senior electrical engineers and with mechanical, firmware and software engineers on a small team where everyone owns real parts of the robot.

This role is for someone at the start of their career who already builds hardware for fun and has done it on the job through co-ops or internships. Recent graduates are welcome. You'll start by owning smaller boards and test hardware end to end, from schematic to bring-up, and take on larger subsystems as you grow.

What you'll do

• Design schematics and multilayer PCB layouts for embedded boards, test fixtures and debug tools, with review from senior engineers.
• Take your boards from design through fabrication, assembly and bring-up, and fix what you find.
• Select and integrate microcontrollers, sensors, power circuits and interfaces such as I2C, SPI, UART, CAN and USB.
• Write the firmware requirements a new board needs to come up, and work with the firmware team to get it running.
• Design and build test fixtures, bring-up stations and diagnostic hardware that the wider engineering team uses every day.
• Support motor-control and power-electronics work on robot subsystems.
• Design, analyze and test wire harnesses for the robot and test equipment: connector and wire selection, routing with mechanical engineers, voltage-drop and current-capacity checks, and continuity and functional testing.
• Debug hardware in the lab with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, power supplies and electronic loads.
• Run validation tests, record results and help turn failures into design fixes.
• Work with PCBA vendors on quotes, assembly questions and part substitutions; keep BOMs and documentation current.
• Work closely with mechanical, firmware and software engineers to integrate your hardware into the robot.

What you'll need

• A bachelor's or master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering or a related field, completed by your start date.
• 0-3 years of full-time experience. Recent graduates are welcome.
• At least two hardware internships or co-op terms, or equivalent hands-on work on a student engineering team.
• At least one PCB you designed yourself (schematic and layout) and brought up, in Altium, KiCad, OrCAD or similar.
• Experience with microcontrollers and common interfaces (I2C, SPI, UART), and enough C to read and debug firmware.
• Comfort in the lab with oscilloscopes, multimeters, power supplies and soldering.
• A design portfolio: schematics, layouts, photos or write-ups of projects you built, and what you personally did on each.
• Clear written communication and the habit of documenting your work.
• Ability to work onsite in Sunnyvale five days a week.

Nice to have

• Hardware internships at robotics, automotive, aerospace or consumer electronics companies.
• Formula SAE, robotics, rocketry, solar car or similar student teams, especially if you owned the electrical system.
• Power electronics or motor-control projects: a motor driver, DC/DC converter or battery charger you designed.
• Built a test fixture or test automation in Python.
• Exposure to CAN, Ethernet or USB hardware design.
• Sensor integration: IMUs, encoders, current or force sensors.
• Experience taking a board through a contract manufacturer.

Compensation and benefits

• The expected base salary for this role in Sunnyvale, CA is $120,000 - $150,000 per year, in line with California's pay transparency law (SB 1162).
• Where you land in the range depends on your experience and skills.
• Base pay is one part of total compensation, which also includes:

• Equity
• Medical, dental and vision coverage
• 401(k) retirement plan
• Paid time off and other perks