Are you a hardware designer that wants to work on making food more affordable and abundant? Then this may be the right role for you.
What are we doing and why?
Fruit farmers are yearning for higher labour efficiency of their orchards. We know this because we are fruit farmers. We’re also uW engineering grads who started, scaled, and sold a tech company that made some first-in-world products for electric vehicles. We’re now focused on blending those experiences to make orchard robots.
The first robot we’re building is a robothinner. Thinning is similar to harvesting, but done earlier in the season when the fruit is marble-sized. It is an important (and currently expensive) step in fruit farming. Thinning is well suited for automation and is a great step towards building a roboharvester.
In 2025, we built the first prototype and successfully demonstrated it at both our own orchard and a customer orchard. In 2026, we built three robots (Tic, Tac, and Toe) and deployed to 14 orchards. The deployments proved that our concept works. The goal now is to get the robots to a production grade for the 2027 fleet. This role (the Hardware Design Engineer) is an important role help make that happen.
Does this sound like you?
We are looking for a person to join our team to own the system-level electrical architecture and design process for our robotic platform. You will work on systems ranging from lab tests to field-ready machines. Specifically, you will work on power distribution, power conversion, circuit protection, control and communications systems, wiring harnesses, electrical interconnects, and the integration of motors, sensors, embedded controllers, and edge compute hardware.
From business and product-level requirements, you will develop technical requirements, estimate timelines and costs, set milestones, define and execute tasks, select components, coordinate external design and manufacturing partners, identify technical and supply-chain risks, and independently solve problems or raise them to the team as appropriate.
The role includes hands-on involvement throughout the development lifecycle, including schematic and PCB design, prototype assembly, board bring-up, wiring and integration, bench testing, fault analysis, and validation of complete systems. You will work closely with the team to ensure that our systems perform reliably in challenging outdoor environments.
How and where we work.
We work primarily out of our Kitchener office. Nothing replaces real-world experience, so we have robots in orchards as much as possible and we prioritize everyone on the team having a chance to see their work in action in real orchards. As a result, some travel should be anticipated for this role; however, the amount of travel can be adjusted based on team member’s interest and focus. For example, we are doing limited-scale testing in Chile next month.
We are an intentionally small team. We like it. But it's not for everyone. It requires people to take initiative and work independently, while being able and willing to support others on the team. We are rapidly learning and refining what the robots needs to do. If you want a slow paced environment where you know exactly that you need to do over the next 12 months - this is not a great spot for you. If instead, you want to have a draft plan for the next 12 months and know we'll iterate, learn, and improve over that time window, then you have found a great team to join.
Our goal is to make the front of the grocery store, the produce section, the most affordable and delicious part of the store. This can only happen with robots.
If you want to be at the cutting edge of physical AI, want to do something in agriculture/agtech, and enjoy seeing your hardware make a meaningful difference in the field - this team and opportunity is a great fit.
