Principal Mechanical Engineer, Additive Manufacturing

Elastium is transforming the legacy footwear industry toward rapid, fully automated, and localized production. Our manufacturing platform combines proprietary 3D printing technology, software, and materials science to make shoe production as effortless as pushing a button. We're building the most frictionless way of turning bits into useful atoms, sending ripples of singularity across the industry, and bringing tens of billions of GDP back to America.

You'll be playing the key role in rolling out the mass production of Elastium production cells, operating at unprecedented scale for the AM industry. Specifically, you will:

• Execute the mechanical design of the most advanced FGF/FDM 3D printers on Earth, from initial concept through testing and deployment.
• Eliminate expensive, complex assemblies with radically simple designs that minimize part count, are trivial to build, and scale fast.
• Develop novel tooling solutions for fabrication and assembly of structural parts.
• Develop process flows, breaking down large assemblies into a logical part flow of subassemblies and sub-processes.
• Create excellent technical documentation - test plans and reports, assembly instructions, inspection requirements, part and assembly drawings, vendor specifications, BOMs, etc.
• Work with contract manufacturers and vendors across various disciplines to develop repeatable, sustained processes for quick-turn development as well as at-scale production.
• Troubleshoot and resolve mechanical issues during design, commissioning, and production rollout.

Requirements

• BS in Mechanical Engineering or equivalent.
• 3+ years of experience designing, testing, and shipping complex electromechanical systems (Robotics or Industrial Tech preferred).
• Proficiency with NX (should be your primary CAD for 2+ years).
• A formidable track record building systems utilizing robot arms or precision gantry kinematics.
• Hands-on experience with CNC milling/turning, sheet metal fab, and welding; excellent understanding of DFM/DFA and what makes good production documentation.
• Familiarity with common elements of manufacturing systems: linear guides, ball screws, encoders, reducers, servos, pneumatic/hydraulic systems, and etc.
• You're high-agency operator with mission-critical discipline and accountability. You identify and neutralize threats before they escalate.

Why this job matters

At Elastium, you won’t be another engineer optimizing inside an existing box-you’ll build in the wild, architecting a new industrial era where factories run like software, starting with footwear. Footwear is an enormous challenge because it’s a massive, messy, labor-heavy industry that left the U.S. for a reason. Reinventing how footwear is made at scale requires the deployment of autonomous plants with thousands of robots that can be reconfigured in real time with no human in the loop. If you want to solve problems that fundamentally reshape the physical world, this is the mission.