As the founding mechatronics hire, you will own the physical machine end-to-end. You will design and build hardware capable of operating in high-cadence, chilled food environments, from end-effectors for fragile ingredients to hygienic enclosures for GPU compute. This is a rare opportunity to lead hardware development for a proven founding team.
Founding Mechatronics Engineer at Merista
Join Merista as their Founding Mechatronics Engineer and lead the hardware development for a new generation of food production robots. Based in Barcelona, the founding team brings deep operational expertise from REMY Robotics, which was acquired in 2025 after delivering 15,000+ hours of live service. You will own the physical machine end-to-end, designing everything from hygienic end-effectors to sealed GPU enclosures for 2-4°C environments. This is a unique opportunity to build a fleet from the ground up, manage the full BOM, and deploy fenceless cobots into major European factories alongside a team that has already proven they can ship food robotics at scale.
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Location
Barcelona, Spain
Compensation
Not Disclosed + Equity
Company
Merista
Role overview
Merista is a physical AI company building operated robotic portioning cells for chilled prepared-meal production lines in medium to large food factories.[1][3] Its system is designed as a portioning robot that fits into the footprint of a single worker station on existing lines, where the robot picks up ingredients, deposits them toward a target weight, and places them onto trays or bowls moving through the process.[1] The solution integrates perception and weight sensing for each portion, uses a food-safe robotic arm for ingredient manipulation, performs inline quality assurance checks before trays move to the next station, and logs every portion and check for traceability and analytics.[1] Merista targets cycle times under six seconds per task (subject to ingredient and line validation), aims for around 97% useful uptime after deployment maturity with defined exclusions, and is designed to beat manual baselines in portion accuracy to improve consistency and yield.[1] Its intended commercial model is a flat per-robot monthly subscription that bundles hardware, software, monitoring, and support, positioning the company as an ongoing automation service provider rather than a pure equipment seller.[1] Overall, Merista focuses on automating hard‑to‑fill, repetitive stations in food factories, refining its product while expanding into new markets.[3]
What you will do
- Design custom end-tools and utensils for handling deformable, fragile, and irregular food ingredients at a target 3g accuracy within 3-6 second cycles.
- Engineer sealed enclosures for local GPU compute and complex sensor integration capable of withstanding daily high-pressure cleaning and continuous cold operation.
- Manage the complete hardware lifecycle, including component selection, BOM cost roll-ups, and building repeatable assembly processes for a small fleet.
Who this is a fit for
- Several years of experience designing electromechanical machines through to production, with specific expertise in mechanism design, sealing, and cycle-life arithmetic.
- Hands-on expertise in cobot integration, force-limited operation, and designing for washdown/hygienic environments found in food, pharma, or medical device industries.
- Deep familiarity with European machinery safety standards and conformity, including ISO 10218 and the Machinery Regulation (EU) 2023/1230, or the appetite to own it fast.
Why this role is remarkable
- Lead hardware from concept to production floor as the first mechatronics hire, reporting directly to the CTO and owning the physical machine end-to-end.
- Work with a high-pedigree founding team that successfully scaled and exited REMY Robotics after 15,000+ hours of live service across five cities.
- Tackle unique engineering challenges involving high-speed food handling, fenceless collaborative operation, and daily washdown requirements in 2-4°C chilled environments.
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