Industrial Automation Specialist

Bardin's in-house automation and robotics expert, the person who makes sure everything we build actually reflects how automation and robotics work in the real world.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Bardin is the always-on application engineer for the automation industry. We're a Physical AI company: the engineering judgment required to scope, deploy, and support complex automation, captured in machine-readable form for the first time.

That means every decision we make, what goes into the knowledge graph, how we structure our data, what the product should do next, needs someone in the room who actually knows automation and robotics from hands-on experience, not just from what a customer told us. That's this role. You'll be our in-house automation specialist: evaluating what the product says, shaping how we structure automation knowledge, and weighing in on where the roadmap goes next.

By "automation and robotics" we mean the disciplines that make up the job: controls (PLC programming, I/O mapping, control panel design), motion (robot arms, actuation, cycle time), mobile robotics (AMRs, fleet management, facility navigation), safety (guarding, e-stops, functional safety standards), sensing (vision, proximity, feedback systems), networking (EtherCAT, Profinet, EtherNet/IP and how devices actually talk to each other), HMI/SCADA (operator interfaces, visualization), pneumatics/fluid power, and mechanical/fixturing (end-of-arm tooling, gripper and fixture design), plus how all of it gets specified, integrated, and commissioned on a real project. You don't need deep expertise in all of these, most automation engineers specialize in one or two — but you should be comfortable navigating the full picture and know enough to ask the right questions outside your core area.

This is a mid-level role by design. We're not looking for 15 years of executive experience. We're looking for someone with real, hands-on exposure to one or more of these areas who's sharp, curious, and wants to build fluency across the rest on the job.

IN THIS ROLE YOU'LL

• Evaluate industrial automation and robotics content across tickets, chat answers, and scoping outputs — catching what's wrong, incomplete, or unrealistic
• Weigh in on product roadmap decisions, bringing real automation/robotics judgment to what we build next and in what order
• Plan and structure how automation knowledge gets represented in our data — ontology, categories, relationships between concepts
• Work closely with our AI engineer, a future data scientist, and the product team to make sure every automation/robotics-related decision holds up in the real world
• Be the go-to in-house automation specialist the rest of the team checks in with
• Dig into edge cases, gaps, and things the knowledge graph gets wrong, and help fix them

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• 2+ years of experience in industrial automation or robotics — this can come from a robotics-related military unit or equivalent hands-on experience, or a role at a company
• Relevant degree, such as industrial engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, mechatronics, or a related engineering field
• Real, hands-on exposure to industrial automation or robotics — controls, motion, safety, sensing, mobile robotics, or I/O work
• Curious and sharp — comfortable digging into how things work and forming an opinion on what's right or wrong
• Comfortable working with structured data and content, even without a formal data or software background
• Excited to work cross-functionally with engineers and product, not just in a technical silo
• Early career — this is a great next step for someone recently out of an automation-adjacent role, not a senior C-level hire

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience as an applications engineer — scoping, specifying, or supporting automation projects for customers
• Experience specifically with industrial robotics (arm programming, cell integration, robotic work cells)
• Familiarity with any of: Fanuc, ABB, KUKA, Yaskawa, Universal Robots, MiR, SMC, Festo, Siemens, Rockwell/Allen-Bradley, Beckhoff, Omron, Cognex, Keyence, SICK, Pilz
• Any exposure to AI tools or interest in how AI products get built