Engineering Technician, Actuators

About the Team

Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives.

About the Role

We are seeking Engineering Technicians to support the assembly, testing, and prototyping of custom electromechanical actuators for advanced robotic systems. You will build and test hardware from engineering drawings and procedures through inspection, troubleshooting, and rework, partnering closely with mechanical, electrical, manufacturing, and test engineers.

These roles focus on hands-on work with precision electromechanical hardware, including stator prototypes, motor and actuator assemblies, and mechanical and electrical testing. You will help turn engineering designs into validated hardware while improving build records, work instructions, and repeatable assembly and test practices for future robotic platforms.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires in-person presence 5 days a week.

In this role, you will:

Each opening focuses on actuator builds, testing, or stator prototyping, with responsibilities aligned to the selected specialty.

- Actuator builds: assemble subassemblies and complete actuators from drawings, bills of materials, and work instructions, checking fit, orientation, torque, routing, and workmanship.

- Testing: set up and run established mechanical and electrical tests, confirm the setup against the procedure, record measurements, and identify unexpected results.

- Stator prototyping: support winding, insulation, termination, bonding, inspection, and rework using the selected build process and documented instructions.

- Troubleshoot build and test issues with engineers. Isolate problems through inspection and measurement, escalate deviations, and verify the result after approved rework.

- Maintain accurate build and test records, part and revision traceability, inspection results, and rework history.

- Use bench observations to improve work instructions, fixtures, tooling, and parts organization as prototypes evolve.

- Follow safety, ESD, cleanliness, and quality practices, and communicate material shortages, unclear instructions, and other blockers as priorities change.

You might thrive in this role if you:

- Have hands-on experience building or testing mechanical, electrical, or electromechanical hardware in a lab, prototype shop, or manufacturing environment.

- Can work from drawings, bills of materials, wiring diagrams, and procedures, and recognize when the instructions and hardware do not agree.

- Use hand tools, torque tools, and measurement equipment carefully, with consistent workmanship and attention to units and acceptance limits.

- Troubleshoot methodically, document observations, and know when to pause work and ask for engineering support.

- Take ownership of build quality and records while adapting to changing designs and priorities.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience relevant to the selected specialty may include:

- Building or testing actuators, motors, robotics hardware, servos, or other precision electromechanical systems.

- Motor manufacturing, especially stator assembly, winding, insulation, termination, bonding, impregnation, or inspection.

- Soldering, crimping, connector assembly, harness routing, adhesives, or fixture-assisted assembly.

- Mechanical or electrical test setup, instrument checks, measurement capture, and documenting unexpected results.

- Inspection, traceability, nonconformance handling, and structured rework.

- Hands-on rework, basic machining, or prototype part modification using shop tools.

- Use of calipers, micrometers, multimeters, LCR meters, insulation-resistance testers, or torque tools.

- Improving prototype or manufacturing work instructions and build processes.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.