Senior Actuator Engineer (Hands Team)

Rhoda Ai

Job details

  • UNKNOWN
  • FULL_TIME
  • Mountain View
  • United States
  • Verified 2026-09-25
  • Salary: USD 175,000–280,000/yr
  • Source: Rhoda Ai public ASHBY source

Original job description

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $450M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

You will design the actuation at the heart of the hand: compact, efficient motor-and-gearbox units that must deliver human-hand dexterity in a human-hand package. Your actuators define what the entire system can do.

What You'll Do

  • Design compact motor-gearbox actuator units for the hand's fingers and wrist, from concept through production

  • Architect miniaturized geartrains — especially planetary — that hit torque, backlash, and packaging targets at finger scale

  • Size and select motors against torque, speed, power-draw, thermal, and efficiency requirements

  • Build and run bench and dyno tests to characterize actuator performance, efficiency, and durability

  • Partner with the structures engineer on packaging and thermal paths, and with the electrical engineer on drive and sensing integration

What You Bring

  • Track record of designing and shipping gearboxes, especially planetary gearboxes

  • Experience miniaturizing geartrains for tightly packaged, weight- and volume-constrained applications

  • Strong command of motor sizing and selection, including power draw, torque density, and efficiency analysis

Nice to Have

  • Gear design experience — tooth profiles, materials, and manufacturing methods

  • Experience with tendon- or linkage-driven finger actuation

  • Familiarity with backdrivability and transparency requirements for teleoperation

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