Mechatronics​/Robotics Engineer

Pike Robotics is a Houston-based, post-revenue startup building Wall-Eye
, the first wall-crawling robot engineered to inspect fixed equipment in hazardous, flammable, and confined spaces
. Our first use case is above-ground storage tank inspection—work that today requires costly shutdowns, is dangerous to perform, and often produces inaccurate results. Wall-Eye enables zero-incident, in-service inspection
, reducing cost to asset owners by up to 8X
.

Founded in 2022 from a collaborative research project between Phillips 66 and Texas Robotics Labs, Pike completed its MVP in 2023. The company has completed 20+ tank inspections via paid pilots and field tests, with more scheduled in 2026
. Pike has also won awards including 1st place (Chevron Facilities of the Future),
Top 4 (Rose Rock Bridge showcase), and 8th place (Rice Business Plan Competition). Pike is supported by NSF, Deepstar Tech Symposium, UT Austin, Rose Rock Bridge, VCs, and others, working with 15 customers in the Oil & Gas and Chemical industries.

Our robots keep technicians out of explosive environments and give operators continuous, high-quality data to make better maintenance decisions. Your work will directly improve safety and emissions outcomes for the process industries, while reducing costs.

Commitment:
Full-time (40–50 hours/week depending on deadlines)

Location:

In-person in midtown Houston with intermittent travel to customer sites; ~1 day/week remote on average

Start Date:

As soon as possible

Work Environment &

Physical Requirements:

• Comfortable working in industrial environments while wearing PPE (safety glasses, hard hat, gloves, FR clothing when required)
• Able to lift/carry robot components, tools, and equipment up to 50 lbs
• Able to climb stairs at customer sites
• Willing to complete required site safety training and drug/alcohol testing
  ; follow all customer and Pike safety procedures

As a Mechatronics/Robotics Engineer at Pike Robotics, you will own the design and integration of the mechanical, electrical, and software systems that make our inspection robots reliable in real industrial environments—high heat, corrosive exposure, sludge, and flammable vapors. Your work spans the full product lifecycle:
concept → analysis/simulation → prototype → validation → production readiness → field deployment
, with a constant focus on robustness, serviceability, and manufacturability.

You’ll work closely with the cofounders to define requirements, weigh trade-offs, and turn functional goals into field-ready systems. This includes mechanical foundations (CAD, assemblies, drawings, tolerances, materials), electromechanical subsystems (actuation, sensing, power, harnessing, networking), and ROS-based software that runs on real robots in refineries and plants—not just in simulation. You’ll also help advance the current Wall-Eye platform while contributing to requirements for the next-generation robot.

• Own robot subsystems end-to-end from concept through field deployment—requirements, trade studies, design reviews, prototyping, validation, and production readiness
• Design and release production-ready mechanical systems in Onshape/Solid Works (or equivalent), including assemblies, drawings, and BOMs for harsh industrial environments
• Engineer for DFMA and serviceability using GD&T and tolerance analysis to ensure repeatable assembly, maintainability, and long-term part availability
• Integrate and tune electromechanical hardware (actuators, motor controllers, sensors, compute, power, harnessing) to achieve stable, reliable operation in the field
• Develop and maintain ROS-based robot software, contributing to autonomy/sensing/control and helping drive the ROS 1 → ROS 2 transition
• Implement and validate perception/localization/navigation (URDF/Xacro, TF, RViz/Gazebo, SLAM/localization stacks, Nav2) across lab, simulation, and field tests
• Train and deploy vision ML models, owning the data loop from collection and labeling through evaluation and redeployment
• Debug and resolve cross-domain failures across mechanical, electrical, embedded, networking, and software systems; build tools/fixtures to…