Lead Hardware Engineer – Production
Required skills
- hardware
- manufacturing systems
- robotics
- electrical engineering
- electromechanical
- PCBAs
- power distribution
- sensors
- actuators
- communication interfaces
Nice to have
- firmware
- mechanical systems
- contract manufacturer
Role summary
Tutor Intelligence is seeking a Lead Hardware & Manufacturing Systems Engineer to scale their AI-powered robot manufacturing. This role requires deep electrical and electromechanical expertise to lead the technical development of manufacturing systems. You will be responsible for how robots are built, tested, and tracked, working closely with Hardware and Software Engineering to challenge designs, establish acceptance criteria, and troubleshoot complex failures. The ideal candidate will leverage software, automation, data, and AI to improve processes, test systems, and manufacturing workflows, driving efficiency and quality at scale. This is a technical leadership role focused on execution and problem-solving, not traditional people management.
About Tutor
We believe robots are the biggest lever we have to making the physical world a better, more affordable place. But robots are a rounding error in our society: nearly nine out of ten American factories and warehouses don’t even have a single robot, and robots have yet to make their way into our homes or places of business.
Tutor Intelligence is changing that.
Tutor is a robotics research and deployment company, building generally capable robot hardware and artificial intelligence to enable robots to go where no robots have gone before. Our robots range from a semi-humanoid with frontier dexterity approaching the human form to workhorses that do back-breaking work, moving boxes, pallets, and bulk goods for businesses from family-owned manufacturers to some of the largest brands in the world. Tutor robots are manufactured at scale and operate as a network, combining the whole fleet’s learned experience to train ever more capable robot artificial intelligence.
Founded at MIT and headquartered in Watertown, MA, our team is full stack: we design and manufacture robot hardware, train our own models, work directly with the smallest and largest end-customers, and maintain our fleet across the United States. We’re a team of researchers, engineers, technicians, operators, and sellers who love building things and solving hard problems.
Our mission is grand: robots everywhere, for the common good, raising the standard of living across North America, and then the world.
The Role
You're the technical lead of our Production Engineering team. You're a senior hardware engineer the hardware team respects, the person who jumps in to root-cause a problem on a robot we need to ship, and the mentor who raises the bar for the engineers around you. You report to the Head of Manufacturing.
Your mission is to build the environment that lets our manufacturing team produce high-quality robots at a competitive cost: designs that are easy to build, test and service, manufacturing systems that catch problems early, and test coverage that keeps defects out of the field.
Your first priority is getting robots through bring-up and FAT clean: drive the top recurring build failures to permanent fixes and stand up the test systems our line needs.
This is not a traditional manufacturing engineering role. You've designed and owned hardware. You can open a schematic, put a scope on a board and find the problem, and you shape the product with design engineering instead of building whatever is handed over.
Example projects you might work on:
Why This Role Matters
Scaling our fleet is an engineering problem, not a headcount problem. Many of the designs, test systems and manufacturing processes that will get us there don't exist yet. This role is the technical leader who builds them.
What You'll Own
What Success Looks Like
Required
Preferred
Why Join
How We Work: Our Values in This Role
We hire against our values, and we'll interview you against them too. Here's what they look like in this seat:
Why Tutor?
Whether you’re designing robots, closing deals, running deployments, or creating the processes that help us scale, your work doesn’t sit on a shelf. It shows up on real production floors, making physical work safer and more affordable.
Our team is driven by curiosity and a genuine love of building. Everyone here takes real ownership, learns fast, and holds a high bar while having each other’s backs. If you love hard problems and creating things that didn’t exist before, you’ll fit right in.
Benefits
We take care of our team so they can do their best work. At Tutor, you’ll get:
- Fully employer-covered health insurance, so you’re protected without the premium.
- A managed 401(k) to help you plan for the future.
- Generous time off: unlimited PTO and all federal holidays off for full-time salaried employees, and 16+ days of accrued paid time off plus 1.5x pay on federal holidays for hourly employees.
- Regular in-office meals and team social events throughout the year.
As Tutor grows, so will our benefits. We’re continuing to invest in ways to support our team at work and beyond.
Tutor Intelligence is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applicants from all backgrounds.
Similar roles
- Senior/Staff Software Engineer, PlatformTutor Intelligence · San Francisco, CA · Onsite
- Sustaining Engineering Manager, RoboticsTutor Intelligence · Watertown, MA · Onsite
Engineer/Technical Specialist (Mid – Sr.) | Generation Control Systems EngineeringAmerican Electric Power · Columbus, OH · Onsite
Systems Engineer IIRosendin Electric · Minnesota · Onsite
Power Systems Engineer Intern - Co-OpElectric Power Engineers · Remote · Remote- Systems Engineer, Electro-Optical Payload Electronics & IntegrationTurion Space · Irvine, CA · Onsite
