Skin & Materials Engineer
The body has to feel right — and that's physics, materials, and obsession over details nobody else would notice.
Your charter
Design and build a body that has to feel right — down to details nobody else would notice.
Where you'll focus
Actuation & structure
The mechanisms and skeleton that let her move with the right weight, speed, and grace.
Materials & surfaces
Skins, compliance, and finish — the difference between works and feels alive.
Prototype to production
Take subsystems from sketch to part with our Shenzhen supply chain, owning tolerances and DFM.
What you'll own
- Design the actuation, structure, and surfaces of a body that has to feel right.
- Take subsystems from sketch to prototype to production with our supply chain.
- Own tolerances, materials, and the details everyone will feel but never name.
- Build, break, and rebuild — fast.
What you bring
- Strong mechanical, actuation, or materials fundamentals and real hardware shipped.
- You sweat fidelity — the gap between 'works' and 'feels alive'.
- Hands-on with CAD, prototyping, and DFM.
- Comfortable working close to manufacturing in Shenzhen.
Bonus points
- Robotics, prosthetics, soft robotics, or haptics experience.
- You've worked with silicones, skins, or compliant mechanisms.
Benefits
- Compensation benchmarked to the best in robotics and AI, plus meaningful equity — build like an owner.
- Health coverage for you and your family.
- The hardware, compute, and tools the work demands — no penny-pinching on what matters.
- Based in Shenzhen, Shanghai, or Hong Kong — or work fully remote.
- Unusual ownership, and a front-row seat to a category being invented.
How we hire
We keep hiring short and human: a first conversation, a work session on a real problem, and time with the people you'd build alongside. We hire for taste and conviction over pedigree — if the work pulls at you, apply even if you don't tick every box.
About Somnia
Somnia builds intimacy robotics — presence you can hold, engineered end to end: the body, the intelligence, and the story we tell about her. Most of what we need doesn't exist yet, so we're inventing it. We hire for taste and conviction over pedigree, and we give people unusual ownership. (And yes — she/her. We mean it.)