Research Hardware Engineer
About Arbor Neuroscience
(formerly Forest Neurotech)
Arbor is a nonprofit research organization working on one of the hardest open problems in clinical neuroscience: how to change brain circuits by design.
Millions of people with depression, chronic pain, and other brain disorders have no treatment that works. Modulating activity in the brain circuits underlying their symptoms - with electrical stimulation, focused ultrasound, or magnetic stimulation - can work spectacularly well. But it doesn't work reliably, and we can't predict who it will help.
That's what Arbor aims to fix. The starting point is a new class of experiment: intervene, measure how the circuit responds, track the symptom, and repeat in the same individual over months. We’re building the necessary experimental platform. It currently includes the Forest 1 ultrasound system, which works like a wearable functional MRI, but with higher resolution. The system images activity across large brain volumes, including deep brain structures, and will soon stimulate as well. We are also adding electrode-based interfaces in animal studies. From these data, we'll build models to make neuromodulation predictable.
Arbor is a Focused Research Organization within the Convergent Research family, and the new name for Forest Neurotech. We're a mission-focused nonprofit, doing multidisciplinary translational work that doesn't fit in a lab or on a company roadmap. We have the funding to run the first phase, and we're a small team - the people we hire now will shape what Arbor becomes.
The Role
Development of the Forest 1 ultrasound device is continuing, largely in collaboration with an external commercial partner with substantial engineering capacity. For this effort, the role is less about hands-on engineering than about understanding our experimental constraints well enough and having the engineering credibility to make sure the device gets built the way our science requires.
Our human studies are longitudinal, and the goal is for the research to take place in participants' homes. That means developing a system that is more portable, more robust, and usable by people who aren't researchers.
We're also building a first-of-its-kind platform combining chronic electrophysiological stimulation and recording with bidirectional ultrasound for initial use in animals. You'd work closely with the scientific team on the mechanical and electronic components: implant design, simple circuit boards, and benchtop testing.
This is the person who makes sure the hardware exists to get the science done.
Arbor currently runs, and will be launching, several kinds of experiments in humans and animals. Hardware is a bottleneck across these efforts:
As a nonprofit research organization, we also want to make these tools available to the broader research community. That means platforms documented, reproducible, and robust enough that collaborators can readily use them.
The work spans mechanical, electrical, and bioengineering, and we don't expect one person to do it all. What matters is knowing what's needed, knowing what you should build yourself, and knowing who to bring in for the rest. Like everyone here, you'd also end up doing things outside that description - we’re small, and roles are wide.
We're hiring at multiple levels and will calibrate scope and title to your experience. At the earlier end, you'd own the hardware work in close collaboration with the scientific team. With more experience, you'd set the engineering direction and build the team as it grows.
What You’ll Do
- Work directly with the scientists running the experiments to understand their needs and translate them into hardware requirements
Own our side of Forest 1 development: characterize how the current device performs in our experiments, define what the next version needs, and work with the engineering partner to get it built
Design, build, and help validate hardware for a novel platform combining bidirectional electrophysiology and ultrasound in animals, including implants, headstage interfaces, simple circuit boards, and test rigs
Make Forest 1 portable and robust enough for use outside the clinic
Identify what we should build in-house and what we should contract out, and manage the contractors when we do
Prepare our platforms for use by outside groups: documentation, reproducibility, and the robustness that requires
Who We’re Looking For
Depth in at least one of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or bioengineering, and enough working knowledge of the others to know what you need and who to ask
A record of building physical things that worked: instruments, devices, rigs, or research hardware, ideally in a setting where the requirements weren’t always clear or fixed
The credibility and judgment to work with a strong external engineering team and ensure the outcome meets our requirements
Comfort with CAD and, ideally, simple board design
A network you can draw on for the work we don't do ourselves
Genuine interest in the experiments and clinical applications the hardware serves
Directness without friction - you say what you think, ask when you don't know, and aren't looking to compete with your colleagues
The successful candidate will have:
Nice to have: experience with ultrasound systems or transducers; neural interfaces, electrodes, or implantable hardware; wearable or at-home medical devices; work with large animals; experience at a small company or academic lab where you built your own tooling; regulatory or safety testing experience.
You don't need a neuroscience background. You do need to want one.