Head of Robot Hardware at Anvil Robotics — San Francisco, CA

You'll be the person who takes Anvil's next robot from a sketch of what it should do to a physical machine that ships at scale.

Anvil is building the platform layer for Physical AI — robotics hardware and software that's radically more accessible and suitable for a new generation of intelligent automation than legacy industrial solutions.

We own and operate our own manufacturing. Sourcing and production were built in-house from scratch, and in our first 12 months, on that line, we built and shipped 200+ robots (OpenARM and OpenYAM manipulators, paired with a custom Linux Devbox, and teleop kits, cameras, and end effectors) to customers like NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Toyota, Google, Cobot, and Path Robotics in 60+ countries, while we grew from two founders to 30 people across three offices. Very few robotics companies at any stage can say that. Almost none can this early.

The devkits we ship are the wedge, not the business. Volume has earned us what money alone can't buy: a custom force-sensing actuator partnership with major actuator OEMs, meaning our next robots ship with hardware capability nobody else has — and an install base that doubles as the distribution channel. That's the strategy: aggregate volume → supply chain partners → unique long term advantage.

The next step is a bigger one: a bimanual robot platform — a completely new kinematic, built from the ground up around our custom force-sensing actuators — that has to work as a production deployable product manufacturable at scale.

The situation you're walking into:

• Anvil has real hardware DNA — the devkit class hardware line already ships to customers — but no one is yet owning the next generation deployment ready platform, from concept through mass production.
• This is not a revision of the OpenARM line. The new robot is a clean-sheet design — new kinematics, designed from scratch — and the first product built around our custom force-sensing actuators.
• We're deliberately going firmware-light for this generation: compute is a full Linux Jetson on a carrier board with EtherCAT out to the actuators, so at most there are a few simple boards to design. The engineering weight is mostly mechanical, with EE that's light and straightforward — power distribution, connector hubs, harnessing.
• You'll work daily alongside mechanical and electrical engineers, plus our in-house production team and component vendors, but you won't be their formal manager. Anvil is small enough that this role is about technical direction and judgment, not headcount.
• You'll report to a mix of the CEO and CTO — practically, mostly the CEO, who sits in Taipei next to the rest of the hardware team day to day.

What you'll own:

• The technical vision and system level architecture for Anvil's next robot: what it's made of, how it moves, how its subassemblies fit together, and how the wiring runs through all of it.
• Translating kinematic and product requirements into a physical, buildable machine — material choices, actuation approach, subassembly breakdown — not just a concept sketch.
• Manufacturability from day one: making the tolerance and process calls that determine whether this robot can go from one prototype to hundreds of units without a redesign.
• Guiding the work of mechanical and electrical engineers and vendors so their pieces come together into one working robot, even though you won't personally do all of their deep technical work.
• Direct ownership of DFM, tooling, and production readiness on Anvil's own manufacturing line in Taipei, and direct engagement with the component vendors (sheet metal, CNC, motors, electronics) who feed it.

What the first 100 days look like:

• By day 30: ramped on OpenARM/OpenYAM's design history and lessons learned, the force-sensing actuator program, and the in-house Taipei production line and vendor relationships. Teardown of existing competitor products who have shipped in volume to learn from their designs. Has been on-site in Taipei for the program kickoff, sat in on at least one build, and reviewed all of Anvil's current vendors and understand their strengths, weaknesses, tolerances, and pricing.
• By day 60: has a first pass system architecture for the new bimanual robot — kinematics, actuation approach built around the custom force-sensing planetary actuator, major subassemblies — pressure-tested against what our production line and vendors can actually build.
• By day 100: is driving the new robot's system architecture end to end, with mechanical and electrical engineers executing against a plan you set. Is the person others check manufacturability and cross domain tradeoff calls with.

Who you are

• You've designed physical hardware that went from a concept to something manufactured at real volume — you understand materials, actuation, and subassembly design well enough to make the calls yourself, not hand them off.
• You think about manufacturability and mass production from the first sketch: tolerance stacks, vendor capability, assembly sequencing, and what breaks when you go from one unit to a hundred.
• You don't need to be an expert in PCB design, motors, reliability testing, or structural engineering, but you can think laterally across all of them — enough to know when something's wrong, ask the right question, and make a defensible call at the boundary between mechanical and everything else.
• You have genuine, provable depth in at least one or two of PCB/electronics design, actuation and motor systems, reliability engineering and accelerated life testing, or structural and materials engineering — beyond just being conversant in it.
• You're comfortable driving technical direction across engineers and vendors you don't formally manage, earning the "lead" in your title through judgment rather than authority.
• You default to a design that can actually be built and shipped, not the most elegant one on paper.
• You don't need to relocate — this role can be remote. But hardware gets real in person, and you'll travel to Taipei for the on-sites that anchor each program: major project kickoffs, initial system bring-up, and first production batches. We run those deliberately — they're what lets the rest of the work be remote.

Education & experience:

• Bachelor's or Master's in mechanical engineering, mechatronics, or a related field. A PhD is not required — this is a build it and ship it role, not a research role.
• Years matter less to us than trajectory. A typical req for a role like this might ask for 8–10+ years and prior "Head of Hardware" experience; we're looking for someone with 4–6 unusually fast growing years spent as the strong #2 to a senior hardware leader on a real, shipped robotics or hardware product — someone who watched how the materials, actuation, and manufacturability calls actually got made, made a growing share of them personally, but never had the whole program handed to them. This is that handoff.

What this role is not:

• Not a people management role. There are no direct reports today, and building a management org is not the mandate — this is a hands on technical ownership role.
• Not a role where you personally design the PCBs, tune every motor controller, or write the perception stack. Those are owned by specialist engineers; your job is system level judgment and integration across their work, plus genuine depth in one or two of those areas.
• Not a role for someone who's only ever designed hardware that stayed a prototype. If you've never taken something through a real manufacturing ramp, this isn't the right seat yet.
• Not a role with an existing DFM/manufacturing playbook to inherit for the new robot — where it doesn't exist, you're building it.