Bright Saver Industries招聘Founding Robotics Engineer, US/China Manufacturing

Palo Alto, California. Full time. $130,000 to $150,000 depending on experience.

I'm Kevin Chou. I run Bright Saver Industries. We help overseas hardware makers manufacture and certify their products for the American market: the manufacturing, the data custody, and the government filings that come with it. We do this today for power inverters. I'm opening a robotics line and I need one person to help me build it.

This is the first hire on that line. You'd work with me directly, on a category that opened last month.

What the job is

Map the manufacturers, their products, and where the real opportunity is. Read the hardware properly: what's inside these machines, what the radios and sensors do, what would have to change to build a version here. Work in Mandarin and English with manufacturers, suppliers and partners. Then help deliver the programs we sign.

I care as much about how you think as what you've done. I want someone who takes a robot apart to see how it was built, reads a datasheet out of curiosity rather than obligation, and has an opinion about why a design choice was made. Electronics, mechanics, software. You don't have to be deep in all three, but you have to be genuinely interested in all three, because this work sits across them.

We'll do the manufacturer outreach together, build the manufacturing programs together, and work out the software strategy together. I'm not looking for someone to hand a lane to.

Two things I need, and the first one is the hard one

1. Professional Mandarin, alongside English. Half this job is technical conversation with Chinese manufacturers. Component specifications, engineering constraints, negotiation. Not pleasantries. I'll test this on the call, in Mandarin, on technical vocabulary rather than small talk.

2. You've built robots and you can't stop talking about it. A university robotics team, ARC Robotics (formerly RoboMaster North America), FIRST, VEX, RoboCup, Formula SAE Electric, a rover or underwater vehicle team, BattleBots, or something you built on your own that actually worked. An engineering degree, or one in progress. Zero to five years out.

What I don't care about

Your cover letter. Which school you went to, mostly. Whether you've done this exact job before, because nobody has.

Work authorization

I can support it, including sponsorship. Tell me your situation in your application and we'll work it out.

To apply

Send your resume and answers to Kevin@BrightSaverIndustries.com. Two questions, a few sentences each is plenty.

1. What's the most interesting robot you've ever built or taken apart, and what surprised you about it?

2. If it were your call, which category of robot would you go after first, and why? Vacuums and mowers, warehouse and logistics, restaurant and hotel service, humanoids and quadrupeds, or something I haven't listed.

I read those answers before the resume, and they count for more.

Full details: https://www.brightsaverindustries.com/careers/robotics