Senior Actuator Engineer (Hands Team)

The role

You will design compact motor-and-gearbox actuator units for the hand's fingers and wrist from concept through production. You will architect miniaturized geartrains and size motors against various requirements.

What you will do

• Design compact motor-gearbox actuator units for the hand's fingers and wrist, from concept through production
• Architect miniaturized geartrains especially planetary that hit torque, backlash, and packaging targets at finger scale
• Size and select motors against torque, speed, power-draw, thermal, and efficiency requirements
• Build and run bench and dyno tests to characterize actuator performance, efficiency, and durability
• Partner with the structures engineer on packaging and thermal paths
• Partner with the electrical engineer on drive and sensing integration

Required qualifications

• Track record of designing and shipping gearboxes, especially planetary gearboxes
• Experience miniaturizing geartrains for tightly packaged, weight- and volume-constrained applications
• Strong command of motor sizing and selection, including power draw, torque density, and efficiency analysis

Nice to have

• Gear design experience — tooth profiles, materials, and manufacturing methods
• Experience with tendon- or linkage-driven finger actuation
• Familiarity with backdrivability and transparency requirements for teleoperation

About the company

Rhoda AI is building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. They own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models.