Hardware Systems Prototyping / Research Engineer

About 1X

Since its founding in 2015, 1X has been at the forefront of developing advanced humanoid robots designed for household use. Our mission is to create an abundant supply of labor through safe, intelligent humanoids.

As a Hardware Systems Prototyper / Research Engineer on the 1X Labs team, your role is:

Your role is to challenge the current state of the art by building real systems—quickly, rigorously, and in constant contact with reality.

You ideate new mechanisms, architectures, and system concepts; turn them into working hardware; and subject them to relentless scrutiny. Prototypes are not presentations—they exist to answer concrete questions. You build to test ideas, invalidate assumptions, expose hidden constraints, and push performance as far as it will go. You don’t stop when something works—you stop when it approaches human-level behavior, or when you understand precisely why it doesn’t.

You move fluidly between mechanics, electronics, and software. You iterate fast, but with intent: each build is measured, benchmarked, and compared against biological or system-level reference targets. When something holds up, you push it harder. When it breaks, you learn from it and move on.

This role is fundamentally about execution. You will both originate ideas and bring others’ concepts to life—including ideas that are not yours. You don’t get stuck in theoretical debates or optimization-before-evidence; you prefer to build, test, and let the system speak.

Crucially, you don’t stop at clever prototypes. You do what it takes to translate successful concepts into something that can survive integration with real products, real constraints, and real manufacturing processes.

Responsibilities

• Research and critically evaluate state-of-the-art technologies across hardware, actuation, sensing, and system design, with a focus on what can realistically move humanoid performance forward.

• Rapidly prototype promising concepts—your own and others’—using electronics, mechanics, and software to get to first hardware as quickly as possible.

• Design experiments and test setups to rigorously evaluate performance, characterize limits, and generate trustworthy data.

• Relentlessly benchmark and falsify prototypes against explicit performance targets.

Work closely with engineering, materials, and manufacturing teams to turn successful prototypes into credible paths toward product integration.

Requirements

• Strong hands-on background in hardware systems, demonstrated through work experience, projects, or prior roles.

• A lifelong tinkerer: you’ve been building, modifying, and breaking physical systems long before it was your job.

• Several years of experience doing innovative, hands-on work in industry, a startup, or a research lab.

• A portfolio of side projects that goes far beyond basic prototyping and shows deep technical ownership.
  

You are the kind of person where:

• If given four motors, a battery, an MCU, an IMU, an aluminum block, and access to a mill and soldering iron, you can make something meaningful move within a day—and explain exactly what limits its performance.
  

You are proficient at:

• Designing and assembling PCBs appropriate for rapid prototyping.

• CADing and fabricating mechanical parts for fast iteration.

• Operating mills and lathes.

• Debugging electronics with oscilloscopes and logic analyzers.

• Writing low-level driver, control, and test software.

• Modeling system behavior well enough to guide design decisions.

• Designing experiments and analyzing results against concrete requirements.

  Nice to Have

  • Exposure to biomechanics or cognitive science.

  What this role quietly demands

  • Bias toward action over argument.

  • Comfort executing on ideas that didn’t originate with you.

  • Respect for evidence over opinion.

  • Persistence: you keep pushing until the system either approaches human-level performance or yields a clear explanation of why it cannot.

    We believe the best work is done when collaborating and therefore require in-person presence in our office locations.