Senior Industrial Automation Engineer

Your New Role and Team
Sanctuary AI, a world leader in building dexterity-driven Physical AI for general-purpose robots, is looking to hire an experienced and driven Automation Engineer, Industrial with deep domain expertise in traditional manufacturing automation. This position is part of our Engineering team and plays a key role in helping us bridge the gap between legacy automation systems and the future of Physical AI.

Reporting to the Head of Product, you’ll apply your 15+ years of experience in factory automation to help apply best practices in task automation, to Sanctuary technology integration, and production-scale reliability.

As one of our Automation Engineers, you’ll work hands-on with our AI team, robotics engineers, and external partners to assess and scope automation tasks, identify opportunity areas, and advise on deployment considerations that align with real-world customer needs and constraints.

Success Criteria:
• Identify and map the types of tasks that are already well-served by traditional automation systems, and where gaps remain.
• Guide our team on best practices for automating physical work in environments like manufacturing, logistics, and packaging.
• Help us benchmark and validate the performance of our robotic systems against industrial-grade alternatives.
• Work with the engineering team to ensure task replicas in the lab accurately capture the essence and constraints of real-world customer tasks.
• Identify and lead the development of hybrid customer solutions that integrate both Sanctuary's AI and traditional automation tools (e.g., PLCs, sensors, and robotic arms) to maximize real-world effectiveness.
• This role is hands on and field oriented, and requires regular travel to customer sites for integration, testing, and commissioning.

Your Experience and Qualifications:
• Bachelor’s Degree in Mechatronics, Electrical/Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
• 15+ years in application engineering, factory automation, or systems integration
• Deep working knowledge of automation systems including PLCs, HMIs, sensors, and actuators
• Strong background in task design and throughput optimization
• 15+ years designing or integrating factory automation systems using PLCs, vision systems, and robotic arms.
• Experience working with integrators, OEMs, or directly on plant floors.
• Willingness and ability to travel frequently for customer site work, including travel across the United States and internationally, based on deployment needs without limitation.

Skills:
• Effective communicator with both technical and non-technical audiences
• Skilled in root-cause analysis and system-level debugging
• Familiar with both low-level control and high-level system orchestration
• Comfortable working cross-functionally in fast-paced environments

Traits:
• Above all else, a consistently positive attitude and a willingness to do whatever it takes to create robust solutions to mission objectives.
• Successful candidates will be a proponent of personal responsibility for themselves and their teammates.
• Empathetic listener with conflict resolution capabilities.
• Consistent bias for action, communication, and interpersonal savvy.
• Self-motivated and able to solve problems independently.
• Mission driven and passionate about bringing human-like intelligence to machines.

Working at Sanctuary AI
Sanctuary AI is an equal opportunity employer; employment with Sanctuary AI is governed based on skills, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any way by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. In 2023, Sanctuary AI moved into a state-of-the-art office facility and has been recognized by LinkedIn as a Top Startup company.

Compensation and Benefits
Sanctuary offers a market-leading compensation package that includes competitive salaries, equity stakes, and a full suite of benefits for permanent employees, encompassing health coverage, paid time off, cutting-edge work facilities, and worksite flexibility by role. Our commitment to fairness ensures that our total compensation consistently surpasses market standards.

About Sanctuary AI
Founded in 2018, Sanctuary builds humanoid robots and a novel control system for them that integrates symbolic logic and reasoning with data-driven robot foundation models. We use our robots to collect vision, audio, touch, and proprioception data from the perspective of the robot while they perform real-world work tasks. We use that data to train multimodal robot foundation models. Because our systems are vertically integrated, we can design, deploy, and refine at scale. Our mission is to create the world's first human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots.

Recruiting and Employment Agency Notice:
Recruitment and hiring is conducted internally by Sanctuary AI. We are not seeking or soliciting any new agency partnerships or agreements at this time. Any employment agency or professional recruiter (“Agency”) that provides an unsolicited resume(s) or otherwise presents a prospective job candidate through the Sanctuary AI career site or directly to any Sanctuary AI employee, irrevocably grants to Sanctuary AI the unrestricted right to engage, hire, or contract with that candidate at Sanctuary AI's sole discretion without any compensation to the Agency. We appreciate your interest in working together, and should the need arise our Talent Acquisition team will contact any external firms directly.