Senior Mechanical Engineer - Closures

Zoox is developing fully autonomous vehicles and the supporting ecosystem required to bring the technology to market at scale. Sitting at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and design, Zoox aims to provide the next generation of mobility-as-a-service in urban environments. We believe the transition to self-driving vehicles requires a combination of elegant vision and uncompromising execution.

As a Staff Closures Engineer, you will own the closures architecture for the vehicle. You will be the subject matter expert for how doors, latches, hinges, actuators, seals, and glazing behave as a system, how that system interacts with the rest of the vehicle, and where the interdependencies between it and body, EE, firmware, manufacturing, and service will surface later in the program. This is a hands-on architecture role, not a detached one: alongside setting system direction, you will personally own a set of the most difficult parts in the system and take them from concept through sourcing, validation, and launch.

Our closures are unlike conventional vehicles. They are fully automated, operate at a duty cycle closer to transit than to passenger cars, carry sensor and compute integration, and have no driver to compensate for them. The person in this role is comfortable being accountable for both the architecture and the specification.

In this role, you will:

• Serve as the technical owner and subject matter expert for the complete closures system. Understand how every component interfaces within the system and with the rest of the vehicle, and anticipate interdependencies between closures and adjacent complex systems before they become integration failures.
• Set and defend the closures architecture across current and future vehicle programs - mechanism topology, load paths, sealing and water-management strategy, actuation and state-detection strategy, tolerance and dimensional strategy, and the hardware/firmware boundary - making the trade-offs explicit in cost, mass, timing, reliability, serviceability, and manufacturability.
• Own the closures requirements set and its rationale, and improve the flow of testing from component through subsystem to full-vehicle level so the DV plan retires the risks the architecture creates. Create the design processes and standards that outlive any single program - kinematic synthesis, system dynamic modeling, DFM, and mechanism design.
• Personally own the design of critical closures components and mechanisms - latches, hinges, actuators, seals, glazing interfaces, or equivalent - through concept, DFMEA, sourcing, tooling, PPAP, validation, and launch, including releasing and maintaining your own production-quality CAD and drawings with GD&T.
• Size and check your own designs using section-capacity and inertia calculations, SimSolid (or equivalent) FEA pre-processing, and Python/MATLAB mechanism and mechatronic modeling. Independently lead root cause analysis on substantial, ambiguous hardware problems and drive the fix to closure through design, process, or firmware.
• Influence decisions at executive leadership levels, mentor engineers new to closures and to Zoox, initiate and lead projects across functions, and act as the technical point of contact for current and prospective closures suppliers across multiple commodity domains.

Qualifications

• BS in Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Mechatronics, or a related field.
• 10+ years of professional experience in mechanical engineering (or 8+ years with an advanced degree), with a focus on automotive closures, complex mechanisms, or robotics.
• Demonstrated ownership of a closures system - or an equivalently complex, integrated vehicle system - at the architecture level, including the requirements set, the integration strategy, and the trade-off decisions.
• Proven record of taking closure systems or complex mechanisms through the full vehicle development cycle (design → sourcing → validation → launch), with mass-production experience.
• Expert-level fluency in 3D CAD, preferably CATIA 3D experience, with the ability to personally release production-quality parts.
• Deep experience designing automated sliding or hinged doors, liftgates, trunks, decklids, or charge-port mechanisms. Demonstrated expertise in kinematic synthesis and mechanism load-path design.
• Strong knowledge of Design for Manufacturability, GD&T, dimensional engineering, and manufacturing processes (casting, stamping, injection molding, extrusion).
• Able to hold a credible technical conversation with EE, firmware, CAE, manufacturing, quality, and service, and to arbitrate between them.

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience with simulation tools, like MATLAB/Simulink for mechanical system modeling and closed-loop control.
• Solid electronics fundamentals; comfortable with ECUs, sensor selection (e.g., Hall-effect vs. microswitch state detection), CAN bus, and basic electrical debug.
• Experience with FEA and feasibility tools, like InspireForm, InspireCast, or similar
• Experience with transit, commercial, or fleet applications where closures see far more cycles and less forgiving service conditions than passenger cars.
• Experience with seal design, water management, wind noise, and/or door-closing effort.