Senior Solutions Design Engineer

Instrumental builds the manufacturing acceleration platform behind the world's most complex electronics. We capture digital exhaust and engineering context from assembly lines-images, test logs, BOM data, performance, repair cycles-and our AI engines identify insights that are difficult or impossible for human engineers to find. We accelerate the companies building the AI era by improving manufacturing yield, throughput, and ramp. NVIDIA, Meta, L3Harris, and their manufacturing partners rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product introduction and production.

As a Senior Solutions Engineer, youll combine mechanical design, electronics manufacturing expertise, and customer collaboration to create custom hardware and software solutions that become part of real production lines. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys solving difficult engineering problems, has worked across many different consumer electronics products, and is excited to see their designs deployed in the field.

If youve ever wanted to expand your impact beyond designing a single product, this role offers the opportunity to work across dozens of manufacturing environments while partnering directly with customers to solve some of the industrys toughest production challenges.

What Makes This Role Different

Unlike most mechanical engineering roles, you wont spend years iterating on a single product.

Instead, youll work across a wide variety of customer applications-from AI infrastructure and networking equipment to consumer electronics and defense. Every project presents a new engineering challenge, a new manufacturing environment, and a new opportunity to build something that has immediate impact.

Youll own technical solutions from concept through deployment while working alongside experienced engineers who enjoy solving difficult problems and moving quickly.

What Youll Do

• Architect customer manufacturing solutions: Partner directly with engineering, manufacturing, and operations teams to understand their production processes, technical requirements, quality goals, and manufacturing constraints. Translate those needs into end-to-end inspection solutions, determining where Instrumental stations should be deployed within a production line to maximize coverage, throughput, and business impact.
• Design production-ready hardware: Define the technical solution for each deployment, including station placement, imaging strategy, mechanical fixtures, optics, lighting, and supporting hardware that integrates seamlessly into high-volume manufacturing lines.
• Leverage manufacturing data: Learn how customers use manufacturing data-including images, test results, BOMs, and production records-and incorporate those insights into solutions that improve visibility, identify issues, and accelerate manufacturing decisions.
• Lead technical customer engagements: Serve as the technical expert throughout the customer lifecycle, balancing engineering tradeoffs such as cycle time, manufacturability, ergonomics, cost, line constraints, and inspection coverage while partnering closely with Sales, Product, Hardware, Software, and Customer Success to ensure successful customer deployments.

Were Looking For Someone Who Has

• 10+ years of experience in mechanical design, manufacturing engineering, product design, automation, test equipment, or related engineering disciplines.
• Experience working on high-volume electronics manufacturing floors, with a strong understanding of production workflows, manufacturing processes, line constraints, and the realities of scaling from NPI to mass production.
• Strong CAD experience (SolidWorks, Creo, NX, or similar).
• Strong understanding of manufacturing processes, DFM, tolerance analysis, and mechanical design best practices.
• Excellent communication skills and a genuine interest in working directly with customers.
• A builders mindset-you enjoy solving ambiguous problems, taking ownership, and moving quickly.
• Startup experience or a history of driving initiatives independently is a plus.
• Ability to travel occasionally to customer sites.

Bonus Experience

Were especially excited to talk with engineers who have experience in:

• High volume consumer electronics
• Robotics or automation
• AI server or networking hardware
• Optical systems or machine vision

We're a growing team that consistently works collaboratively, is supportive of each other, and is highly energized by the opportunity for large impact. We actively work to promote an inclusive environment, valuing passion and the ability to learn.

You're encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't precisely match the job description!

The following is a representative annual overall total compensation range for this position within the Bay Area: $204,000-$240,000. In addition, job level & salary opportunity is evaluated through our interview process - we review experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of each applicant.

Instrumental is very proud to offer a highly-rated variety of benefits including: Health, Vision, Dental, Public Transit/Commuter Plans, and Maternity/Paternity Leave.

At Instrumental, protecting company and customer information is a shared responsibility. All employees are expected to comply with company security and privacy policies and promptly report suspected security incidents or policy violations.