Supplier Development Engineer, Structures

Supplier Development Engineer, Structures | Supply Chain
Location: Hayward, CA (on-site)

About 1X
We’re an AI and robotics company based in Palo Alto, California, on a mission to build a truly abundant society through general-purpose robots capable of performing any kind of work autonomously.
We believe that to truly understand the world and grow in intelligence, humanoid robots must live and learn alongside us. That’s why we’re focused on developing friendly home robots designed to integrate seamlessly into everyday life.
We’re looking for curious, driven, and passionate people who want to help shape the future of robotics and AI. If this mission excites you, we’d be thrilled to hear from you and explore how you might contribute to our journey.

Role Overview
We are seeking a Supplier Development Engineer to help scale our supply chain to support the delivery of world-class robotics systems. You will be responsible for ensuring suppliers can produce precision structural components that meet our rigorous quality standards. Your work will play a vital role in the launch and sustained production of highly complex bipedal humanoids.

Responsibilities

• Partner with engineering and sourcing teams to select suppliers based on capabilities in castings, machining, and structural assembly

• Source and qualify vendors for castings, extrusions, machined parts, and sheet metal

• Validate surface treatments, welding, heat treatments, and coating processes

• Review GD&T on complex structural components and verify with metrology tools

• Collaborate on lightweighting initiatives and design optimizations

• Lead the supplier industrialization process from design through production ramp-up

• Support suppliers with tooling, equipment, and process qualifications

• Assess supplier readiness for vehicle builds and manage production risk

• Drive the APQP process and support PPAP through the start of production

• Train suppliers on 1X’s quality systems and review part quality documentation

• Lead root cause and corrective action efforts for supplier quality issues

• Monitor and report supplier quality metrics to ensure ongoing improvement

• Apply lean and quality tools to drive continuous improvement across the supply base

• Travel up to 40%, domestically and internationally, sometimes on short notice