{"id":1487180,"url":"https://alion.io/job/mind-robotics-mechanical-design-engineer-plastics","title":"Mechanical Design Engineer, Plastics","company":{"id":678470,"name":"Mind Robotics","domain":"mindrobotics.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/mindrobotics","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":88,"open_postings":25,"ghost_share":0.2,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":53,"computed_at":"2026-10-01T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Robotics","role_family":"Robotics","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Palo Alto, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":147000,"max_usd":282000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":173},"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Physical AI","optional":false},{"name":"SolidWorks","optional":false},{"name":"TPU","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-29T22:16:01Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-29","last_verified_at":"2026-10-01T16:52:50Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":1,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":1},"description":"About Mind:\nMind Robotics is building Physical AI for real-world industrial deployment, starting with the factory floor. We believe the hardest problems in AI are solved when researchers and engineers are hands-on with the physical world every day - and we're looking for people who are passionate about robotics, value ownership, and are excited to tackle difficult problems.\nResponsibilities\nOwn the mechanical design of A-surface plastic components for the robot - covers, skins, shrouds, bezels, and cosmetic enclosures - from industrial design intent through production tooling.\n\nDevelop Class-A surfaces and translate ID surfacing into manufacturable parts, holding gap-and-flush, parting line, draft, and aesthetic intent across the full assembly.\n\nSelect polymers and processes across the cosmetic stack: ABS, PC, PC/ABS, PA and glass-filled grades, TPU/TPE, and specialty resins - balancing appearance, impact and creep behavior, chemical and UV resistance, flammability, and cost.\n\nDefine and own GD&T, tolerance stack-ups, and datum schemes across multi-part plastic assemblies and their interfaces to structures, actuators, and electronics.\n\nDrive DFM and DFA for injection molding, insert molding, overmolding, and secondary operations - gate and ejector strategy, wall thickness, ribbing and boss design, warp and sink mitigation, and shutoff design.\n\nOwn cosmetic specification: textures, gloss levels, color matching, painting, plating, laser etching, and in-mold decoration, plus the defect standards and limit samples that go with them.\n\nWork directly with tool shops, molders, and CMs through tool kickoff, T0/T1 sampling, tuning, and PPAP - reviewing mold flow, tool design, and first-shot parts, and driving corrective action.\n\nBuild and test prototypes using 3D printing, urethane casting, CNC, and soft tooling, then validate with drop, structural, and environmental testing.\n\nQualifications\nExceptional mechanical intuition. You understand how polymers flow, shrink, warp, and fail - and you can predict it before the tool is cut.\n\n5+ years designing injection-molded plastic parts for high-volume consumer, automotive, or robotics products, with parts you took from CAD through production tooling.\n\nDeep, hands-on knowledge of polymer materials science: resin families, fillers and additives, anisotropy, moisture sensitivity, and how process conditions change part behavior.\n\nFluent in GD&T (ASME Y14.5 or ISO GPS) and tolerance analysis, including worst-case and statistical stack-ups on compliant plastic parts.\n\nProven experience owning cosmetic A-surface parts and defending appearance standards with vendors.\n\nStrong surfacing skills in SolidWorks, CATIA, NX, Creo, or similar; comfort reading mold flow results and tool drawings.\n\nComfortable with ambiguity, moves fast, and curious about how the whole system works.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2848,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-29T23:46:30Z"}],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":1,"expected_fill_days":53,"reasons":["conf:3","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-01T05:45:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/mind-robotics-mechanical-design-engineer-plastics","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/mind-robotics-mechanical-design-engineer-plastics.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-01T17:01:44Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":34,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":4966,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-02T00:00:00Z"}}}