Senior Mechatronics Engineer, 3D printing

Elastium is an advanced manufacturing startup company transforming the legacy footwear industry toward rapid, fully automated, and localized production. Our manufacturing platform combines proprietary 3D printing hardware, software, and materials science to make shoe production as effortless as pushing a button. We're building the most frictionless way of turning bits into useful atoms, sending ripples of singularity across the industry, and bringing tens of billions of GDP back to America.

What you'll do

We are looking for an engineer who treats manufacturing as a software problem. You'll build on top of the most advanced extrusion-based 3D printing technology in the world to invent brand-new production processes that defy traditional constraints, maximize speed, and eliminate waste. You will architect the end-to-end automation stack, from complex kinematic pathing to robotic automation workflows that allow our fleet to run without human intervention. Specifically, you will:

• Own motion control layer of our production cells. You will build the G-code/toolpath pipeline, develop closed-loop control logic, and run on-machine testing/debugging. You will drive process optimization by quantifying part quality against input parameters, integrating those insights into production recipes.
• Develop and optimize slicing algorithms and G-code generation code. You will bypass commercial slicer limitations to create complex, non-planar toolpaths for multi-axis deposition.
• Integrate new toolheads, sensors, and electromechanical modules into our production platform. You will torture-test hardware revisions and feed critical data back to the ME/EE team.
• Develop closed-loop control strategies for our FGF foam extrusion process. You will analyze sensor data to define the precise process windows required for consistent material density, rheology, and structural integrity.
• Turn R&D into production, translating breakthroughs into stable, repeatable production cycles.

Requirements

• BS or MS in Robotics, Mechatronics, Mechanical Engineering, or Computer Science.
• You are a builder, a coder, and a hardware hacker. You have a portfolio of projects that proves you live and breathe this stuff (e.g., you’ve built your own robot, CNC machine, 3d printer, or custom motion control system).
• You understand how a 3D mesh becomes a physical object. Experience writing your own G-code generators or modifying open-source slicers is a strong plus.
• Strong proficiency in Python and agentic coding pipelines.
• Understanding of physics involved in FGF/FDM and polymer behavior: thermodynamics, mechanics of extrusion/deposition, polymer rheology.
• You're high-agency operator with mission-critical discipline and accountability. You identify and neutralize threats before they escalate.

Why this job matters

At Elastium, you won’t be another engineer optimizing inside an existing box—you’ll build in the wild, architecting a new industrial era where factories run like software, starting with footwear. Footwear is an enormous challenge because it’s a massive, messy, labor-heavy industry that left the U.S. for a reason. Reinventing how footwear is made at scale requires the deployment of autonomous plants with thousands of robots that can be reconfigured in real time with no human in the loop. If you want to solve problems that fundamentally reshape the physical world, this is the mission.