9 Mothers Senior Mechatronics Engineer at 9 Mothers owning all actuators, motors, gearboxes, and solenoids in the product. Responsible for design, supplier selection, testing, tuning, and production release.
Responsibilities
Own motors and actuators including BLDC/PMSM and frameless torque motors
Design and specify gearboxes and drivetrain components
Manage solenoids and discrete actuators for latches and safeties
Select and tune motor drives including commutation and feedback
Characterize and test actuators with dynamometer and bench rigs
Manage actuation supply chain including vendor qualification and cost-down
Qualification
ExperienceServo depthGearbox fluencyActuator characterizationDrivetrain designProgrammingSupplier managementHands-on rigorComplianceHarsh-environment qualificationWeapon-mountedCustom motor design
Required
Experience: 10+ years in mechatronics or motion-system engineering with a track record of shipping servo-driven products — ideally pan-tilt units, gimbals, turrets, robotic joints or vehicle-mounted systems.
Servo depth: hands-on selection, commissioning and tuning of BLDC/PMSM servo systems: field-oriented control, current/velocity/position loops, encoder and resolver feedback, drive configuration, and diagnosing instability, resonance and thermal limits on the bench.
Gearbox fluency: working command of planetary, strain-wave, cycloidal and worm drives — ratio selection, efficiency, backlash, torsional stiffness, lubrication and lifetime — and a clear sense of when direct drive beats gearing.
Actuator characterization: you have built test rigs and run dynamometer, thermal, efficiency and endurance tests; comfortable with scopes, current probes, DAQ and Python or MATLAB to extract plant parameters from data.
Drivetrain design: can design and detail the mechanical path from rotor to load — bearings, shafts, couplings, seals, preload — in CAD (SolidWorks or similar) with tolerance analysis.
Programming: enough C/C++ or Python to configure drives, automate tests and prototype control code; comfortable reading motor-control firmware.
Supplier management: have specified custom motors or gearboxes with vendors and run qualification, second-sourcing and cost-down.
Hands-on rigor: you build, break, measure and fix your own hardware.
Compliance: U.S. citizenship and the ability to pass a background check.
Harsh-environment qualification: MIL-STD-810 shock and vibration, IP-rated sealing, EMI/EMC, thermal cycling — and the scars from hardware that was abused in the field anyway.
Weapon-mounted, recoil-loaded or vehicle-mounted motion systems.
Custom motor design: frameless, outer-rotor or slotless motors and magnetics; electromagnetic FEA (Ansys Maxwell, JMAG, FEMM).
