Actuator Gear Design Engineer

About the Team

Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives.

About the Role

We are seeking an Actuator Gear Design Engineer to lead the development of custom gears and gear stages for advanced robotic systems. You will own actuator development from early architecture and concept generation through prototype validation and system integration, partnering closely with mechanical, electrical, controls, firmware, and reliability teams. You will partner with external suppliers and internal manufacturing to create full gearbox assemblies.

This role focuses on the design, integration, and validation of precision gearing, including broader knowledge around motor electromagnetics, transmission types, sensing, structural components, and thermal architectures. You will help drive actuator development across the full engineering lifecycle while establishing scalable design, test, and integration practices for future robotic platforms.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person presence 4 days a week.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the architecture, design, and integration of custom robotic actuator gearing.

• Define actuator requirements and system-level trade studies around torque density, bandwidth, efficiency, thermal performance, back drivability, inertia, reliability, manufacturability, and cost.

• Design precision electromechanical assemblies with strong attention to tolerances, alignment, load paths, thermal expansion, sealing, wear, and serviceability.

• Drive actuator integration into robotic systems, partnering closely with controls, firmware, electrical, and robotics software teams to optimize closed-loop performance.

• Develop and evaluate architectures with integrated sensing and encoder strategies.

• Build and validate prototypes through hands-on bring-up, debugging, characterization, and iterative refinement.

• Develop test methodologies and characterization infrastructure for actuator performance, reliability, durability, and failure analysis.

• Analyze test data to identify limitations, failure modes, and opportunities for design improvement.

• Collaborate with manufacturing and supplier partners to transition designs from prototype to scalable production-ready assemblies.

• Support DFM, DFA, DFT, calibration, and assembly strategies for electromechanical subsystems.

• Contribute to actuator sourcing strategy, vendor qualification, prototype builds, and supply-chain development.

• Document designs, interfaces, validation results, and engineering decisions to support long-term maintainability and production readiness.

• Help establish engineering standards, integration practices, and development workflows for future robotic platforms.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have strong intuition for designing high-performance gearing systems and understanding the tradeoffs between performance, robustness, manufacturability, and cost.

• Enjoy operating at both subsystem and system levels, balancing actuator-level optimization with overall robot integration needs.

• Are highly hands-on and enjoy building, debugging, instrumenting, and testing hardware directly.

• Can move fluidly between first-principles analysis, rapid prototyping, and production-oriented engineering decisions.

• Are comfortable working in fast-moving environments with evolving requirements and aggressive technical goals.

• Have a strong sense of ownership and proactively drive cross-functional alignment to unblock progress.

• Communicate clearly across disciplines and can collaborate effectively with research, controls, manufacturing, and operations teams.

• Care deeply about engineering rigor while maintaining the ability to iterate quickly.

• Are motivated by enabling the next generation of intelligent robotic systems through differentiated hardware capabilities.

Preferred qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Mechatronics, or a related field.

• 5+ years of experience designing gears systems, robotic actuators, or precision mechatronic hardware.

• Experience developing transmission elements for robotics, automation, aerospace, automotive, or other high-performance dynamic systems.

• Strong understanding of motors, transmissions, bearings, encoders, structural design, thermal management, and precision mechanical integration.

• Familiarity with actuator sensing architectures, including encoder integration and calibration strategies.

• Experience designing for prototype and production manufacturing processes including machining, casting, molding, and assembly.

• Proficiency with CAD and PLM tools such as NX and Teamcenter or equivalent systems.

• Experience developing validation plans, reliability testing, and failure analysis workflows.

• Experience scaling hardware systems from prototype through high volume production.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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