Senior Test Development Engineer

About the role

Role Name: Test Engineer/ Senior Test Engineer

Department: Manufacturing

Location: San Carlos

About 1X

We’re building humanoid robots that work in home - doing the chores, handling the tasks, and giving people their time back. Simple, but it’s not.

To do this right, we have to solve robotics, AI, manufacturing - at the same time, at scale, in a form factor that has to be safe enough to live with your family. If you’re inspired by this, you’ll thrive here. We’ve been at this since 2014 and we’re at the point where the hard problems are behind us and the hard work is in front of us.

NEO is our flagship - a home robot designed to move, learn, and operate in the real world alongside real people. We’re not demoing it - we’re shipping it. We’re excited to meet you, if this excites you.

If you’ve spent your career working on problems that matter and want to see them actually reach the world - this is that moment. We’re scaling, we’re hiring with intention, and we need people who want to build something that will genuinely change how humans spend their time - safely creating abundance for all.

About the Team:

Test Engineering builds the systems that decide whether NEO hardware is ready to ship. We sit at the intersection of R&D, design, engineering and production. Developing the functional and end-of-line test stations that catch defects early, gate quality on the line, and turn production data into engineering action. As NEO scales into high-volume production, our work is what lets 1X grow without compromising quality.

Your Charter: Develop and own test systems for NEO's electronics and robotic subassemblies as they move from design release into high-volume production. This is a hands-on role spanning software, electronics, firmware, fixtures, and production operations — you'll own stations from requirements through deployment and long-term support. You won't just run tests; you'll build the systems that decide whether robot hardware ships.

Key Outcomes:

- Own functional and end-of-line test stations for robot subassemblies (feet, head, battery, hands, arms, power boards) across their full lifecycle — requirements through deployment, maintenance, and corrective action.

- Ship operator-facing test apps with guided flows, clear pass/fail verdicts, robust error handling, and unit-level traceability.

- Improve station uptime, cycle time, test coverage, data quality, and deployment repeatability as production scales.

- Reduce escaped defects by reproducing and resolving failures across hardware, firmware, software, instruments, fixtures, and process — driving corrective action when stations or products fail.

- Connect results, serial numbers, board IDs, and logs into test-data systems so production data becomes actionable insight.

Key Competencies:

- Strong software development in Python and C++ for test applications, instrument automation, and station infrastructure.