Senior Hardware Engineer

Duckietown is looking for a senior hardware engineer.

Duckietown is an American and Swiss robotics education startup company whose goal is to provide accessible and state-of-the-art robot autonomy education for everybody. 

Duckietown started as a class at MIT;  you can see this duckumentary [1] from the early days.

You can see our recent story on our website [2], such as the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) we organized on edX [3] and the AI Driving Olympics [4] at NeurIPS.

[1]: https://vimeo.com/duckietown/duckumentary 

[2]: http://www.duckietown.com/ 

[3]: https://vimeo.com/duckietown/mooc-trailer 

[4]: https://vimeo.com/duckietown/aido-intro 

What you will do

As an early senior employee, you will take ownership of the design of Duckietown robots, ensure manufacturability and quality, and lead the development of new iterations of the platform while tightly coordinating with our software development, procurement, and education teams.  

Duckietown robots are DIY educational kits and include model self-driving cars (Duckiebots), a modular smart-city environment (Duckietown), and quadcopters (Duckiedrones). Specifications can be found in our online shop [5]. These robots are used by learners aged 16-99 in 59 countries to date: in homes, schools, universities, companies, and government research labs. 

Example projects you will lead include:

• Smart Duckiebattery [6] upgraded design and production management;
• Chip-crunch back-compatible re-engineering of existing systems (where necessary);
• Assessment and streamlining of Duckietown design and manufacturing processes.

[5]: https://get.duckietown.com/ 

[6]: https://docs.duckietown.org/daffy/opmanual_duckiebot/out/db_opmanual_preliminaries_electronics.html 

Who we are looking for

The engineer we are looking for has:

• Competence in robotics engineering, including mechanical engineering, PCB design, and embedded systems;
• Track-record in robot design, prototyping, testing, and producing quality documentation for internal and external use;
• Track-record in planning and executing safety-critical projects over long periods of time;
• A rigorous understanding of acceptance, testing, and validation protocols;
• Great attention to detail;
• (Strict) Professional English language writing, comprehension, and speaking skills: our work is done rigorously in English. 

Additional skills that are nice to have for this position:

• Awareness of compliance constraints in international commerce (acronyms like CE, FCC, RED, LVD, and UN38.1 should be familiar to you);  
• Team and project management experience;
• Intrinsic motivation and passion for stepping up hardware operations in a growing startup with global operations;
• Experience with any / all amongst Python, C, ROS, and Docker;
• You are fluent in Mandarin;
• Work well in a loosely coupled, tightly aligned environment.

Company values

Our values describe how we work and what we give importance to when making decisions on who to bring on board, reward, or let go. We look for team members that share these values and demonstrate them with their behavior. Read our values carefully. 

Pragmatism: We are to the point and avoid unnecessary frills. We find that showing works better than telling and value concise and articulate communication. 

Impact: We like to do work that is impactful and we exhibit a bias to action, always improving upon what exists avoiding paralysis by analysis. 

Ingenuity: We are inventive. We welcome challenges and find clever ways to tackle hard problems. We question the status quo and like thinking of new and better ways of doing things while striving for simplicity.

Curiosity: We value curiosity and questions. We love being asked questions, asking a lot of questions, and learning from the answers. Our curiosity leads us to be broadly knowledgeable about technology, business, and education, and to help our team members even outside of our specialties. 

Tenacity: We persevere and keep the bar straight in stressful situations. We know that what we do is hard - and hard things don’t come easy. We take smart risks, make decisions with strategic judgment and passionately care about Duckietown's success. 

Selflessness: We admit mistakes quickly, help, and rely on our colleagues to create something bigger than the sum of our skills. We value candor, directness, intellectual honesty and put the mission above our egos as we do what is in the best interest of Duckietown. 

Diversity: We are an international team, counting 5 nationalities so far working from 6 countries. We welcome minds from all backgrounds regardless of age, color, ethnicity, gender or gender identity, genetics, physical ability, protected veteran status, race, religion, and sexual orientation. We encourage all qualified candidates to apply.

Duckietown is a high-performance environment driven by results and the ambition to revolutionize robot autonomy education worldwide. It might not be the best fit for everyone, and this is ok. If you are still wondering if you would like to work with us, read our values again. 

Compensation

We offer a very competitive compensation package and a stock options plan. Details vary by experience and location.

We will also give you as many duckies as you wish to receive. 

Logistics

Duckietown work is done remotely. 

We expect to have meetings in the 9 am-3 pm EST / 15:00-21:00 UTC zones. 

Occasional international travel may be required.