🍦 Softgoods Engineer

About the role

At Proception, we are engineering the next generation of highly dexterous humanoid manipulators. Our mission is to bring machines closer to human capability by merging innovative mechanical design, sensor integration, and intelligent control. We're looking for a full-time Softgoods Engineer to own the soft interface between our robots and the world—the skins, pads, and compliant structures that make dexterous manipulation possible. Grip, compliance, durability, and tactile sensing all live or die at the surface. You'll work at the frontier of soft materials engineering, where elastomer mechanics, textile construction, and sensor integration meet real-world contact.

Requirements

• 01+ years of experience engineering softgoods, elastomer components, or soft robotic systems for consumer hardware, wearables, prosthetics, medical devices, or robotics
• 02 Hands-on mastery of silicone casting and molding—mold design, degassing, cure profiles, inserts, overmolding, and bonding soft materials to rigid substrates
• 03 Deep working knowledge of elastomer material properties: Shore hardness selection, hyperelasticity, tear strength, compression set, abrasion resistance, and aging
• 04 Experience prototyping with your own hands—casting, sewing, skiving, laser cutting, 3D printing molds, debugging failed pours at midnight
• 05 Fluent in CAD (Fusion, SolidWorks) for mold and soft-part geometry, including draft, parting lines, and undercut strategy
• 06 Designed soft parts for real-world wear: cyclic loading, friction and grip degradation, contamination, cleaning, and field replacement
• 07 Startup reflexes: you bias toward execution, learn fast, and document like it matters
• 08 (+) Experience with tactile sensor integration—capacitive, magnetic, resistive, or optical sensing embedded in soft structures
• 09 (+) Experience with FEA of hyperelastic materials (Mooney-Rivlin, Ogden) or characterization testing to fit material models
• 10 (+) Experience with textiles, films, foams, or multi-layer laminated constructions
• 11 (+) Experience taking soft parts from prototype to production—compression molding, LSR injection, or cast urethane at volume

Details & responsibilities

• 01 Architect and build the soft anatomy of our humanoid hands: fingertip pads, palmar surfaces, joint skins, and protective covers that deliver human-like grip and compliance
• 02 Design multi-layer soft structures—graded-durometer pads, foam cores, fabric reinforcement, and sensorized skins—that survive millions of contact cycles
• 03 Own the full soft-part lifecycle: material selection, mold design, casting, post-processing, attachment, and field replacement strategy
• 04 Develop and run durability, friction, and compression test protocols; iterate based on wear data and field failures—fast
• 05 Integrate tactile sensing elements into soft structures in collaboration with our sensing and electrical teams
• 06 Drive soft parts toward manufacturability: repeatable processes, vendor qualification, and a path from benchtop casting to production molding
• 07 Collaborate tightly with mechanical, controls, and perception teams to deliver integrated, elegant robots

Compensation & benefits

• 01 Competitive salary and meaningful equity
• 02 Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
• 03 Work with world-class researchers and engineers in AI and robotics
• 04 High-ownership role: you will define the softgoods discipline at Proception from the ground up
• 05 Help define and build next-generation embodied intelligence systems

Interested in this role?

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