Production Test Engineer – Robotics

About Tutor

We believe robots are the biggest lever we have to making the physical world a better, more affordable place. But robots are a rounding error in our society: nearly nine out of ten American factories and warehouses don’t even have a single robot, and robots have yet to make their way into our homes or places of business.

Tutor Intelligence is changing that.

Tutor is a robotics research and deployment company, building generally capable robot hardware and artificial intelligence to enable robots to go where no robots have gone before. Our robots range from a semi-humanoid with frontier dexterity approaching the human form to workhorses that do back-breaking work, moving boxes, pallets, and bulk goods for businesses from family-owned manufacturers to some of the largest brands in the world. Tutor robots are manufactured at scale and operate as a network, combining the whole fleet’s learned experience to train ever more capable robot artificial intelligence.

Founded at MIT and headquartered in Watertown, MA, our team is full stack: we design and manufacture robot hardware, train our own models, work directly with the smallest and largest end-customers, and maintain our fleet across the United States. We’re a team of researchers, engineers, technicians, operators, and sellers who love building things and solving hard problems.

Our mission is grand: robots everywhere, for the common good, raising the standard of living across North America, and then the world.

The Role

Our next-generation robot moves into production in early 2027. We're hiring a Production Test Engineer to make sure every robot that leaves our Watertown factory works.

When a robot fails on the line, you're the one standing next to it with a scope and a meter, finding out why. You fix what you can on the floor, and when it's a design problem you hand it to Engineering with the data that proves it. Then you build the test that catches it next time.

You'll spend about 60% of your week on the production floor, at the robot and the test stations. The rest goes to test software, failure data and fixture design.

What You'll Debug

Actuators and motor drives: joint motors, servo drives, encoders, homing faults

Harnesses and power: intermittent connectors, harness faults, power distribution, battery and BMS

Communications and controllers: CAN and EtherCAT dropouts, embedded controllers, firmware and configuration mismatches

Sensors and compute: cameras, calibration, Linux/ROS compute, provisioning

What You'll Own

Robot debug: take failing robots and subassemblies to a verified root cause

First line of defense: resolve floor issues fast, and escalate design problems with clear data

Bench tests: design subassembly fixtures and hardware-in-the-loop rigs

Factory acceptance test: build the end-of-line test every robot passes before it ships

Test automation: write Python test sequences, with results logged to ION by serial number

Closing the loop: turn recurring failures, field returns and MRB findings into new tests and process fixes

Who You'll Work With

Our production technicians and production supervisor, every day on the line

The Production Engineering lead you report to

Hardware and firmware engineers, who take your escalations

Quality and RMA, who bring you field returns

Your First Year

Bench tests are live for the robot's critical subassemblies before the 2027 ramp

Every robot passes an automated FAT, with results traced to its serial number

Most floor issues are resolved within Production Engineering, without an Engineering escalation

Recurring failures trend down month over month

What You Bring

BS in Electrical, Mechanical, Computer or Mechatronics Engineering

3+ years full-time in production test, manufacturing test or hardware bring-up at a company that builds physical products

A track record of debugging physical hardware to root cause on a production line or during bring-up. You can name the failure, what you measured and how you proved the fix.

Test fixtures, bench rigs or end-of-line testers you built that technicians used every day

Python for test automation and data analysis

Strong electrical skills: schematics, scopes, meters, logic analyzers, CAN traces

You're at home on the production floor, working shoulder to shoulder with technicians

Backgrounds That Fit Well

Production or manufacturing test engineers from robotics and warehouse automation, EV, AV and drones, consumer electronics and 3D printers, or contract manufacturing and industrial equipment.

You'll Thrive Here If

You'd rather be holding a probe on a broken robot than writing a test plan for someone else to run. If most of your experience is software QA, design-validation testing, ECU validation on an existing HIL bench, or chip-level test, this role will feel very different from what you've done.

Nice to Have

You've brought a new robot or hardware product from prototype into production

Mobile robot or robot arm experience

Embedded firmware or Linux experience

MES/PLM experience (ION or similar)

Daily use of AI tools like Claude to build tools and analyze data

Why Tutor?

Whether you’re designing robots, closing deals, running deployments, or creating the processes that help us scale, your work doesn’t sit on a shelf. It shows up on real production floors, making physical work safer and more affordable.

Our team is driven by curiosity and a genuine love of building. Everyone here takes real ownership, learns fast, and holds a high bar while having each other’s backs. If you love hard problems and creating things that didn’t exist before, you’ll fit right in.