Location:
This position is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, with regular travel to our headquarters in Salem, OR, typically one trip  per month on average.

About Agility Robotics
Agility Robotics is pioneering the development of humanoid robots built for real-world work.  Our mission is to create robots that integrate seamlessly into human environments, addressing complex challenges across logistics, manufacturing, and beyond.  As we advance our next-generation platforms, we’re seeking a Staff Robotics Hardware Architect to help define and develop high-performance, system-integrated hardware architectures for humanoid robots.

About the Role
As a Staff Robotics Hardware Architect, you’ll be a key technical contributor to the design, modeling, and integration of Agility’s humanoid robotics platforms. This role bridges deep system-level hardware understanding with simulation-driven analysis, combining architecture ownership with rigorous modeling of kinematics, dynamics, and physical interactions to support performant, reliable, and scalable designs.

You’ll partner closely with mechanical, electrical, firmware, controls, software, and systems engineering teams to guide architectural decisions grounded in physics, trade space analysis, and real-world constraints.

Key Responsibilities

• Contribute to the development and evolution of system-level hardware architecture for Agility’s humanoid platforms, focusing on performance, reliability, and scalability.
• Model robotic system behavior using Python-based tools to inform design tradeoffs, spanning kinematics, multibody dynamics, actuation physics, thermal loading, and structural behavior.
• Lead or support trade studies on key architectural decisions (e.g. actuator schemes, joint topology, sensor placement, compute integration), balancing competing constraints such as mass, complexity, manufacturability, and safety.
• Build and maintain analytical and parametric models to simulate full-body behavior, validate architecture choices, and identify failure modes or performance bottlenecks early in development.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including controls and software, to ensure modeling aligns with real-world system performance and that hardware/software integration supports intended use cases.
• Support requirements decomposition and traceability in partnership with systems engineering and V&V teams.
• Participate in FMEA/FMECA, safety reviews, and hazard analysis activities related to hardware systems.
• Contribute to architecture and design reviews, documentation, and technical mentorship within the hardware team.
  
  

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in robotics hardware design, architecture, or simulation, with deep exposure to integrated electromechanical systems.
• Strong background in multibody kinematics, dynamics, and mechanism-level physics.
• Proficiency in Python, including numpy/scipy, symbolic modeling (e.g. SymPy), and numerical methods for system simulation and trade studies.
• Demonstrated experience developing or contributing to hardware architecture in robotics systems, particularly high-DOF or legged platforms.
• Familiarity with physics simulation tools such as MuJoCo, Gazebo, PyBullet, or similar, and how to interface them with hardware/system design workflows.
• Working knowledge of electromechanical actuation, sensors, embedded compute, and hardware/software interfaces.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to work cross-functionally across disciplines.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with humanoid or bipedal robotic systems.
• Exposure to thermal modeling, fatigue estimation, and energy efficiency tradeoffs.
• Experience interfacing with ROS2 or real-time control architectures.
• Familiarity with functional safety concepts and system-level risk analysis.
• Master’s or PhD in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.