# Technical Soft Goods Designer

**Company:** [OpenAI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/openai)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Hardware Engineering
**Salary:** $266k – $295k/yr
**Skills:** FEA, Mechanical Design, Material Characterization, Elastomers, Tpu, Textiles, Bonding, Molding, Lamination, Cut-And-Sew
**Posted:** 2026-06-12

> Lead engineering, characterization, and productionization of flexible and compliant components for robotic platforms. Design soft material assemblies, develop test protocols, and collaborate with manufacturers to scale production.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Design and integrate compliant or flexible materials into mechanical subsystems and rigid hardware interfaces.
- Leverage FEA tools to characterize material behavior under operational loads, including tension, compression, abrasion, fatigue, and environmental exposure.
- Develop test methods and validation protocols to evaluate durability, performance, and failure modes of soft components.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to transition early prototypes into manufacturable designs.
- Source and evaluate materials in collaboration with supply chain partners and specialty fabricators.
- Work with contract manufacturers on fabrication methods such as bonding, lamination, molding, overmolding, cut-and-sew, and composite layups.
- Analyze system-level tradeoffs between compliance, durability, manufacturability, and integration constraints.
- Document material specifications, test data, and mechanical performance to support design iteration and production readiness.
- Investigate field failures and iterate designs based on observed wear patterns and performance degradation.

## Requirements
- Understand mechanical tradeoffs in elastomers, foams, textiles, and flexible composites.
- Enjoy working across the full lifecycle from early prototyping through production.
- Can develop test fixtures or experiments to characterize material or assembly behavior.
- Are comfortable collaborating with both design and manufacturing partners.
- Are detail-oriented and rigorous about documentation and repeatability.

## Nice-to-Haves
- Degree in mechanical engineering or equivalent.
- Experience with A-surface and cosmetic component development.
- Experience integrating soft or compliant components into robotic, wearable, medical, automotive, or industrial hardware systems.
- Familiarity with environmental or durability testing (abrasion, ingress, cyclic loading, UV, temperature).
- Experience working with contract manufacturers or specialty fabricators.
- Familiarity with material characterization methods for flexible materials.
- Experience transitioning flexible-material prototypes into production designs.

## Similar roles

- [Mechanical Engineer, Sensing](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/81791f1a-fdfb-4396-8f18-cc97c2e741cf) - OpenAI - San Francisco, CA - $266k – $310k/yr
- [3D Printing Lab Technician, Robotics](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/4dbd9348-490c-46bb-bbea-e55f077a14cd) - OpenAI - San Francisco, CA - $266k – $399k/yr
- [Performance Engineer, GPU](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/9de6a298-2d15-4540-85ee-1ad65e6d81ac) - Anthropic - San Francisco, CA - $280k – $850k/yr
- [Robotics Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/2fec06ad-dd6e-401d-81e0-ae19932be4d4) - Luma AI - Los Angeles, CA - $250k – $450k/yr
- [Mechanical Design Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/e35daa57-f740-4afa-b3f8-31d4c0355f71) - OpenAI - San Francisco, CA - $295k – $380k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/2de85d38-4b2c-434e-af81-6d0ae229a1e7
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/2de85d38-4b2c-434e-af81-6d0ae229a1e7