Mechatronics/Robotics Engineer Full Time NEW

Background on Pike Robotics

Pike Robotics is a Houston-based, post-revenue startup building Wall-Eye, the first wall-crawling robot engineered to inspect fixed equipment in hazardous, flammable, and confined spaces. Our first use case is above-ground storage tank inspection—work that today requires costly shutdowns, is dangerous to perform, and often produces inaccurate results. Wall-Eye enables zero-incident, in-service inspection, reducing cost to asset owners by up to 80%.

Founded in 2022 from a collaborative research project between Phillips 66 and Texas Robotics Labs, Pike completed its MVP in 2023. The company has completed 20+ tank inspections via paid pilots and field tests, with more scheduled in 2026. Pike has also won awards including 1st place (Chevron Facilities of the Future), Top 4 (Rose Rock Bridge showcase), and 8th place (Rice Business Plan Competition). Pike is supported by NSF, Deepstar Tech Symposium, UT Austin, Rose Rock Bridge, VCs, and others, working with 15 customers in the Oil & Gas and Chemical industries.

Why this Work Matters

Our robots keep technicians out of explosive environments and give operators continuous, high-quality data to make better maintenance decisions. Your work will directly improve safety and emissions outcomes for the process industries, while reducing costs.

Type of Role

Commitment: Full-time (40–50 hours/week depending on deadlines)

Location: In-person in midtown Houston with intermittent travel to customer sites; ~1 day/week remote on average

Start Date: As soon as possible

Work Environment & Physical Requirements:

• Comfortable working in industrial environments while wearing PPE (safety glasses, hard hat, gloves, FR clothing when required)
• Able to lift/carry robot components, tools, and equipment up to 50 lbs
• Able to climb stairs at customer sites
• Willing to complete required site safety training and drug/alcohol testing; follow all customer and Pike safety procedures

Description of Role

As a Mechatronics/Robotics Engineer at Pike Robotics, you will own the design and integration of the mechanical, electrical, and software systems that make our inspection robots reliable in real industrial environments—high heat, corrosive exposure, sludge, and flammable vapors. Your work spans the full product lifecycle: concept → analysis/simulation → prototype → validation → production readiness → field deployment, with a constant focus on robustness, serviceability, and manufacturability.

You’ll work closely with the cofounders to define requirements, weigh trade-offs, and turn functional goals into field-ready systems. This includes mechanical foundations (CAD, assemblies, drawings, tolerances, materials), electromechanical subsystems (actuation, sensing, power, harnessing, networking), and ROS-based software that runs on real robots in refineries and plants—not just in simulation. You’ll also help advance the current Wall-Eye platform while contributing to requirements for the next-generation robot.

Responsibilities:

• Own robot subsystems end-to-end from concept through field deployment—requirements, trade studies, design reviews, prototyping, validation, and production readiness
• Design and release production-ready mechanical systems in Onshape/SolidWorks (or equivalent), including assemblies, drawings, and BOMs for harsh industrial environments
• Engineer for DFMA and serviceability using GD&T and tolerance analysis to ensure repeatable assembly, maintainability, and long-term part availability
• Integrate and tune electromechanical hardware (actuators, motor controllers, sensors, compute, power, harnessing) to achieve stable, reliable operation in the field
• Develop and maintain ROS-based robot software, contributing to autonomy/sensing/control and helping drive the ROS 1 → ROS 2 transition
• Implement and validate perception/localization/navigation (URDF/Xacro, TF, RViz/Gazebo, SLAM/localization stacks, Nav2) across lab, simulation, and field tests
• Train and deploy vision ML models, owning the data loop from collection and labeling through evaluation and redeployment
• Debug and resolve cross-domain failures across mechanical, electrical, embedded, networking, and software systems; build tools/fixtures to improve test repeatability and speed iteration

Company Culture

We’re driven by a shared mission—to make industrial inspection safer, smarter, and more sustainable through advanced robotics. Every team member can grow into a well-rounded engineer with real autonomy earned through impact. We value initiative, adaptability, respect, and open discussion. Pike is a place for builders who take their work seriously and are committed to doing meaningful work together.

Experience & Qualification Questionnaire (Yes/No)

Please answer the questions below in your application email. A strong candidate will answer “Yes” to a large majority.

A) General Qualifications

1. Are you currently authorized to work in the United States (including STEM OPT or a valid work visa) and able to work WITHOUT SPONSORSHIP now or in the next 2 years?
2. Do you expect to remain at Pike for at least 2 years?
3. Do you hold a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in CS/ME/EE/Mechatronics/Robotics?
4. Have you participated in a robotics team (high school/college) as a member, leader, or coach?
5. Have you worked in the mechatronics or robotics engineering fields for 3+ years, outside of university?
6. Have you worked in a startup/early-stage company/small R&D team for 2+ years with high versatility and self-direction?

B) Mechatronic Integration, Testing, Field Work, and Compliance

1. Have you integrated mechanical, electrical, and embedded subsystems into a cohesive robotic platform and debugged electromechanical failures end-to-end?
2. Have you selected/sourced sensors, actuators, compute, connectors/harnessing, and power components and integrated them end-to-end?
3. Have you tuned motion/actuation systems (e.g., PID control) and resolved issues like backlash, compliance, EMI/noise, grounding/shielding, or intermittent connectors?
4. Have you designed and executed lab and field validation tests and maintained repeatable test plans across hardware + software?
5. Do you have experience supporting certification or safety/hazardous-location requirements (e.g., UL or similar)?
6. Are you comfortable traveling to the field at least monthly to validate improvements and troubleshoot issues?

C) Robotics Software, Perception, and Systems

1. Are you strong in C++ for robotics software development and debugging?
2. Are you strong in Python for tooling, prototyping, scripting, and automation?
3. Are you comfortable on Linux/Ubuntu for robotics development (dependencies, builds, drivers, permissions, system debugging)?
4. Are you proficient with ROS 1 and/or ROS 2 for developing, debugging, and integrating robot software (nodes, messaging, TF, rosbag)?
5. Have you used RViz and a simulator such as Gazebo to validate system integration and robot behavior?
6. Have you built/debugged ROS perception pipelines for camera and/or depth sensing using common ROS imaging components (cv_bridge/image_transport/image_pipeline)?
7. Have you worked with 3D sensor data (LiDAR/depth) for filtering/segmentation/registration or mapping using PCL/pcl_ros and/or Open3D?
8. Have you created/maintained URDF/Xacro robot models and a correct TF tree (tf2), including debugging frame/time issues?
9. Have you shipped localization/SLAM and navigation planning using established ROS stacks (robot_localization/AMCL/Cartographer and Nav2)?
10. Have you trained or fine-tuned your own computer vision models for robotics using PyTorch or TensorFlow?
11. Have you trained a YOLO-family detector on a custom dataset and deployed it in a working system?
12. Have you built an end-to-end dataset workflow for training (data collection → labeling/QA → augmentation → evaluation → iteration)?
13. Have you deployed trained models into a robot pipeline with performance optimization (ONNX/TensorRT) and operational robustness measures (logging/fallbacks/retraining loop)?
14. Are you comfortable debugging wired/wireless networking issues that impact robot operation (latency, bandwidth, discovery, RF issues)?
15. Have you developed or integrated wireless/radio communication for a device (Wi-Fi/LTE/LoRa/mesh)?
16. Do you have hands-on experience with embedded platforms and protocols (I2C/SPI/UART/USB/Ethernet/CAN) and using lab tools to diagnose hardware–software faults?

D) Mechanical Design, Analysis, and Manufacturing

1. Have you taken mechanical designs from concept through prototype, validation, and manufacturing/deployment?
2. Are you proficient in CAD (Onshape/SolidWorks) for assemblies and production drawings?
3. Have you performed structural/thermal/vibration analysis using FEA or analytical methods (ANSYS/Abaqus or equivalent)?
4. Have you built and tested mechanical prototypes using machining and/or additive manufacturing methods?
5. Have you produced/maintained production-ready documentation and procurement artifacts (BOMs, drawings, supplier coordination) and applied DFMA principles?
6. Have you captured or modeled real-world operating environments (measurements, scans, constraints) to support design decisions?

E) Process, Communication, and Collaboration

1. Are you comfortable working in an Agile/SCRUM environment and collaborating using version control (Git/GitHub) and code review?
2. Do you consistently communicate engineering decisions clearly through documentation, drawings, and technical discussions in a fast-paced environment?

F) Industry and Use Case-Specific

1. Have you designed, built, and tested wall-crawling robots?
2. Do you have experience in Oil & Gas, Chemical, or other process industries (inspections, operations, reliability, compliance)?

Compensation

Salary: $100k–$120k

Equity: Stock options targeting 0.5%–1.5% fully diluted ownership at grant, 4-year vesting with 1-year cliff

Benefits: 3 weeks PTO; healthcare; relocation travel expense reimbursement; weekend lunch meals

Application

Complete LinkedIn application process and wait contact by hiring manager.

Pike Robotics is an equal opportunity employer.