Senior Magnetics Engineer, Electro-Permanent Magnets

The Mission

GRAM is a self replication company creating populations of insectoids for the physical economy.

Our first research frontier is self-preservation: the base case of physical self-replication. Our machines will survive, coordinate, and recover without humans. We believe scalable machine labor requires more than single-agent task generality or machines shaped in our image.

About the role

You will own GRAM's electro-permanent magnet device from magnetic-circuit architecture through pulse-waveform requirements, mechanical integration, characterization, and life testing. You will make holding force and release behavior predictable across air gaps, surface condition, geometry, temperature, switching history, and manufacturing variation.

You will define magnetic requirements, device performance, interface constraints, and acceptance limits, then prove them through measured, manufacturable hardware with known energy use, thermal limits, degradation, and failure behavior.

What you will do

• Translate machine load cases into EPM holding-force, shear, air-gap, switching-time, energy, thermal, residual-flux, mass, and lifetime requirements.
• Design magnetic circuits, pole pieces, permanent-magnet arrangements, switching coils, flux returns, sensors, mechanical interfaces, and drive-electronics requirements.
• Use analytical reluctance models and finite-element analysis to predict flux density, saturation, leakage, force, demagnetization risk, eddy-current effects, and temperature sensitivity.
• Build fixtures that measure normal and shear force, flux, current and voltage waveforms, switching repeatability, release behavior, and performance across representative materials and gaps.
• Run cycling, shock, vibration, thermal, contamination, and off-nominal tests; isolate magnetic, electrical, mechanical, and interface failure modes.
• Release EPM designs through drawings, material specifications, magnetization controls, supplier qualification, assembly procedures, and acceptance tests.

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in electrical, mechanical, aerospace, applied physics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Designed, built, and characterized a permanent-magnet circuit, magnetic latch, electromagnetic actuator, motor magnetic circuit, or comparable nonlinear magnetic device.
• Built a nonlinear magnetic model in Ansys Maxwell, COMSOL, JMAG, FEMM, or equivalent using measured or supplier B-H data, and compared predicted flux or force against hardware measurements.
• Hands-on experience with gaussmeters or Hall probes, oscilloscopes, current probes, programmable power equipment, load cells, and automated acquisition in Python or MATLAB.
• Delivered measured force, flux, switching, thermal, or lifecycle results and used the discrepancy between model and test to close a hardware failure or revise a released design.

Preferred experience

• Electro-permanent magnets, switchable permanent magnets, magnetic latching, low-coercivity alloys, or magnetization processes.
• Pulsed-power electronics, coil design, magnetic sensing, contact mechanics, or precision force-test fixtures.
• Magnetic component sourcing, material traceability, environmental qualification, or production acceptance testing.

Pay and benefits

The annual base salary range for this San Francisco Bay Area position is $160,000-$200,000. Health coverage, benefits, and generous equity come with the role. This role is on-site in the San Francisco Bay Area. A relocation bonus is available. We hire to start as soon as possible. We review what you've shipped; if it's the caliber we seek, interviews take about a week, start to finish. We treat your work and conversations with discretion.