Position: Hardware Engineer(Clearpath Robotics)
Location: Waterloo, Ontario
Experience: 3+ Years relevant experience
Education: Degree/Diploma in Electrical Engineering or Equivalent Experience
Division: Clearpath Robotics by Rockwell Automation
About Clearpath Robotics by Rockwell Automation
Clearpath Robotics is a global leader in unmanned vehicle robotics for research and development, and provides hardware, software, and services to enable mobile robotics product deployment, and operation. Clearpath works with over 500 of the world’s most innovative brands in over 40 countries, serving markets that span mining, military, agriculture, aerospace, and academia. Clearpath was recognized as a Robotics Business Review’s RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards 2023 Winner. For more information, visit clearpathrobotics.com.
Clearpath Robotics was acquired by Rockwell Automation effective October 2023. Rockwell is a global technology leader focused on helping the world’s manufacturers be more productive, sustainable, and agile. With more than 28,000 employees who make the world better every day, we know we have something special. Behind our customers – amazing companies that help feed the world, provide life-saving medicine on a global scale, and focus on clean water and green mobility – our people are energized problem solvers that take pride in how the work we do changes the world for the better
About the Job
We’re shipping more and more robots and seeing new uses for our products emerge every day! We need an Embedded Electronics Design Engineer to help us take our innovative designs from napkin sketches to hundreds of pounds of precisely moving parts and facilitate every step in between. You will be responsible for the electronics designs of existing and new research industrial robotics products. This will range through the entire design process from initial concept design and cost forecasting through to detailed design, validation, and final release to production. Design challenges will span from high-level system architecture and power distribution to board layout and field testing.
Our hardware must be many things, but reliability is paramount. It will be your job to build systems that can operate in whatever environment we subject them to, all while keeping the motors turning for our mechanical team and the 1’s and 0’s flowing properly for our software developers.
Your primary responsibilities will be:
- Leading electronics design in standard products and custom development projects with a cross-functional team while ensuring that the project is on time and within budget
- Developing circuits, layouts, and qualification plans for multi-layer PCB designs
- Specifying and sourcing new board-level and system components, communicating with suppliers as needed
- Performing system level electrical integration and testing in robotics platforms, including cable assembly design and prototyping
- Debugging electronics within complex mobile robots and manipulation systems, then driving design revisions to resolve issues
- Working with manufacturing personnel and vendors to create PCB stack-ups and bill of materials
- Supporting the electrical systems of standard products of various lifecycle stages
Additional tasks may include:
- Designing power distribution, battery implementation and motor systems
- Designing and building cable harnesses, busbars, developing cable management strategies, testing integrated systems, and working in close collaboration with Mechanical Designers and Software Developers
- Collaborating with our Client Success team to support our customers
- Supporting the evaluation of existing and new suppliers
- Participating in certification and compliance reviews
- Mentoring junior staff, technicians and co-op students
- Evaluating how we can apply lessons-learned from other industries to our designs
- Supporting on-site installation and commissioning of robotics equipment at customer facilities; occasional travel may be required (after COVID)
About You
You want to work for a small company that thinks big and dreams huge. You are driven, view work as more than just a job, and are never satisfied with a project left half-done. You want to be surrounded by people like you; creative, fun-loving, and passionate about their work. You are motivated by making an impact on your workplace and you thrive on challenging and rewarding problems. Oh, and you have some form of higher education with the common sense to back it up.
Required Experience/Skills:
- Electronics and system level hardware design, including PCB designs involving embedded processors or microcontrollers (preferably STM32)
- Schematic capture, layout, component libraries development, and bill of material creation using an ECAD tool, preferably Altium Designer
- Knowledge of communications architectures including ethernet, USB, CAN bus, RS422/485 and I2C
- Electronic component selection and validation
- Cable assembly design
- Debugging of electronics and system level issues using modern lab equipment including high speed oscilloscopes, bus analyzers, logic analyzers, etc.
- Excellent technical documentation skills
- Accepting responsibility for your designs in the complete lifecycle from concept to customer
- Getting your hands dirty and working with your designs: soldering, building cables, building prototype systems, field testing, etc
- Excellent organizational skills
Bonus points for:
- Working with interdisciplinary teams to optimize product designs
- Experience with high layer count board designs
- Strong knowledge of EMC management principles and best practice design for EMI control, in-depth knowledge of PCB design and PCB technology
- Knowledge about electronics manufacturing and DFM best practices
- Experience working with high-power battery systems
- Mechanical / electro-mechanical design experience or aptitude
- Motor controller design and implementation experience
- Power electronics and SMPS design experience
- Experience with sensor selection and integration (proximity, LIDAR, cameras, etc)
- Experience with Altium and Solidworks
- Robotics interest or experience
- Industrial safety system design and FMEA
- Standards and/or certification authority experience (UL, CSA, CE, FCC, ESA and NEC)
At Clearpath Robotics by Rockwell Automation, we are committed to building and supporting a culture of diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. We hire the best talent regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, age, veteran status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression. If you require special accommodation to complete any portion of the application or interview process, please contact 1-800-301-3863.
