Electrical Engineer

Position: Electrical Engineer

Location: Austin, Texas (onsite)

Employment Type: Full-Time/Permanent

Overview

Our client is a robotics startup based in Austin, Texas, building rugged, scalable robots for situational awareness in hazardous environments. They serve firefighting, emergency response, public safety, oil & gas, defense, and industrial markets. Their mission is to create a new paradigm of scalable, reliable, and useful robots for real-world hazardous operations, providing critical solutions to some of the most dangerous problems.

The client has raised an oversubscribed funding round from top-tier venture firms and is working directly with over 80 major fire departments, law enforcement agencies, industrial teams, and military units across the U.S., including the Air Force, Army, and SERDP. Their robots are built with and for firefighters, first responders, warfighters, and emergency crews.

The team is early-stage, less than 2 years old, with a tight-knit group currently developing the 5th generation of their robot. After years of prototypes, demos, and pilots, they are now designing a production-ready system.

These are foundational roles; joining now means helping shape not just the product but also the company, its culture, and the future of its mission.

Role Description:

As an Electrical Engineer, you will design and build the electrical backbone of robotic systems. You will be responsible for analog and digital circuits, robot bus and wiring design, embedded systems, power distribution, and sensor integration. Your work will span schematic design, PCB layout, bring-up, embedded debugging, and wiring harness development.

This is a hands-on role involving soldering boards, assembling cable harnesses, troubleshooting in both lab and field environments, and supporting systems through thermal, EMI, and vibration testing. You will collaborate closely with mechanical and software teams and own your systems from prototype through field deployment.

You are expected to take initiative, pay attention to detail, and take ownership of system performance. The role provides autonomy for high-impact decision-making along with full accountability for execution.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design analog and digital circuits including power regulation, signal conditioning, and sensor interfaces
• Own PCB development, including schematic capture, layout, and bring-up
• Work closely with mechanical and software engineers to ensure reliable integration
• Troubleshoot and debug system-level electrical issues
• Define and maintain wiring diagrams, harnessing, grounding, and EMI/EMC strategies
• Support sensor selection and integration (thermal, gas, visual, RF, etc.)
• Run and interpret tests for thermal load, EMI, and ruggedness
• Design and fabricate cable harnesses and enclosures for field reliability
• Run SPICE simulations for analog validation, noise analysis, and circuit stability
• Contribute to design reviews and document design decisions
• Help build internal standards and test infrastructure for future iterations
• Communicate directly with users as needed to guide engineering direction

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical or Computer Engineering (or equivalent experience)
• 2+ years designing and testing circuit boards for embedded or electromechanical systems
• Proficiency in schematic and layout tools (e.g., Altium, KiCad, Eagle)
• Strong foundation in analog and digital circuit design
• Familiarity with microcontrollers and communication protocols (UART, SPI, I2C, CAN)
• Comfortable using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, multimeters, and performing firmware-level debugging
• Experience soldering and reworking SMD/SMT boards
• Experience building, testing, and troubleshooting wiring harnesses
• SPICE simulation experience (LTspice, PSpice, etc.)

Preferred Qualifications:

• 3+ years of experience in hardware-intensive product environments
• Experience designing boards that have been shipped or deployed in the field
• Experience with thermal and EMI/EMC design constraints
• Familiarity with embedded C/C++ or collaboration with firmware engineers
• Experience with cable/harnessing tools (SolidWorks Electrical, RapidHarness, Zuken, etc.)
• Experience in a startup or early-stage hardware team
• Strong entrepreneurial track record (engineer, founder, or operator in a 0-to-1 environment), with the ability to support scaling across engineering, operations, and business

INTERESTED?

We are committed to submitting suitable candidates for this vacancy to our client ASAP, for more information contact Renz Moreno at PER Recruitment or send your CV to renz@per-international.com