Mechanical Engineer

Monumental is automating on-site construction with robotics and software.

Our mission is to make construction primarily software-defined and work towards a future where beautiful, bespoke buildings are built within a single day with minimal labour.

We're a growing team (about 80 team members) of mostly engineers and technicians, coming from companies like Palantir, Qualcomm, Dyson, Shopify, Tesla, Meta and 1X.

It's still the early days of building the company, and this is a unique opportunity to be an early employee in a high-growth, high-ambition startup environment.

From Day 1, you'll be able to work with an experienced founding team backed by top-tier investors.

Monumental is based near Artis zoo in the Plantage, in the city center of Amsterdam.

We have a beautiful office with an in-house workshop and robot testing facility.

We're explicitly not a hybrid or remote-first company: we enjoy collaborating 5 days a week at the office.

You can read more on why we believe you should spend your time working on construction, and learn more about our vision and company.

You might also enjoy seeing this video by Andreas Klinger of what our office environment looks like.

About you and this role We are looking for a mechanical engineer to join our team of hardware and software engineers, trying to bring robots and automation to the construction industry to create affordable, beautiful, high quality housing for everyone.

You are a maker, who enjoys building physical things from start to finish, with a bias for speed and simplicity.

You enjoy being involved in and contributing to the entire engineering process: asking the right questions to scope a problem, doing back of the envelope calculations, fabricating parts in our workshop, testing your design live on a construction site and iterating on it to produce a robust and scalable design.

Once you've shown you can own tightly scoped projects at high speed, you'll have the opportunity to lead broader, cross-cutting problem spaces with a small multidisciplinary team.

We're tackling some of the hardest problems in construction robotics: full on-site autonomy, lifting construction-scale payloads, reliable operation at height, and millimetre-level positioning accuracy across our entire technology stack.

We're looking for people who are genuinely excited to lead these efforts alongside a highly capable and supportive team.

Our approach to building robots has focused on identifying the key areas that need de-risking and tackling them head-on through rapid prototyping, avoiding lengthy design processes.

This has allowed us to achieve remarkable results in a surprisingly short amount of time, defying conventional expectations.

If our approach excites you, this role could be a great fit for your interests and skills.

We will offer you an environment that will allow you to thrive using this approach: you will have a high amount of autonomy and we will work hard to not slow you down with company meetings, unnecessary spending approvals, or other processes.

What You'll Be Working On * Pushing toward full robot autonomy for our masonry systems: automated wall-anchor installation and mortar pointing to produce beautiful brickwork.

Autonomous lift platforms and fully automated material-supply enabling our fleet to work uninterrupted across large, messy sites.

* Designing for extreme reliability: our robots need to be tough enough to survive months of harsh construction conditions, yet serviceable and redeployable in under 24 hours.

* Building next-gen hardware to expand what our robots can do: higher-precision brick placement, larger payloads, expanded build envelopes, hot-swappable end effectors, and operation in tight, constrained spaces like scaffolding.

* Developing lift systems to autonomously and safely lift 1000 kg loads to 10 meters.

* Spending time on construction sites, both seeing how your designs perform in the real world and for inspiration of what we should be improving next.

* Designing hardware concepts from scratch.

You should feel comfortable identifying and defining the key requirements to develop an MVP and work towards it.

You should bias towards removing unnecessary constraints to quickly develop concepts.

* Where necessary, decide on materials and simulate static and dynamic loads, stresses, and vibrations using hand calculations or using FEA tools.

* Fabricate a proof-of-concept prototype in the shortest amount of time, which includes: * Sourcing all required components; * Fabricating the necessary parts in our workshop whether they're 3D printed or require CNC milling or turning; * Assembling and bringing up functional prototypes: * Pulling together all required components and fabricate any custom parts-whether 3D-printed, CNC-milled, or turned-to create a fast proof-of-concept.

* Integrating and validate the actuators and electronics your prototype needs, including sensors, motors, solenoids, encoders, and related hardware.

* Writing or adapt simple embedded code (Arduino, ESP32, etc.) to bring up the electronics, run basic tests, and verify mechanisms.

* While you'll have support from our in-house electronics experts to productise successful concepts, we're looking for someone who's confident building quick, scrappy prototypes more-or-less independently, while collaborating closely with the team where needed.

* Own testing the prototype, iterating on your designs where necessary, and sometimes throwing things out and starting over again.

* You should enjoy fast-iteration cycles.

Our favourite tradition is showing off our new hardware successes and failures in our Friday show and tell.

* Work with our software and perception engineers and integrate designs into our software and perception stack, making them truly autonomous.

* Once successful, you will productise the prototype.

This includes: * Producing clean CADs in OnShape following best practices; * Producing technical drawings, documentation and other artifacts to aid small series production and assembly.

* Working closely with the assembly technicians to understand how you can 10x production of your design.

What We're Looking For * Someone with a bias for action: you build fast, iterate in quick sprints and focus on de-risking what matters most.

You're comfortable developing hardware at software speed, continuously refining requirements through early testing and deployment.

* A proven record of being a builder and being able to work autonomously: you can point us to example of shipped projects where you were the driving force of getting something done.

This can be in a professional context, in a top student ("dream") team, or even just personal side projects.

* Experience in designing and delivering products from concept up to low-volume production.

Exposure to high-volume manufacturing is a plus.

* Proficiency in rapid prototyping, 3D printing, machining, and milling to make product designs a reality.

* Deep knowledge of mechanical systems and structural dynamics: e.g.

statics, mechanics of materials, dynamics, vibrations, material science, and controls.

* Expertise with 3D CAD modeling with complex parts and assemblies, e.g.

OnShape, Solidworks, or Siemens NX.

* Strong in mechanical/structural calculations.

You're comfortable moving fast using first principles approaches to problems and hand calcs to de-risk designs, and disciplined about using simulations only when they actually add value.

* Experience selecting, sourcing, and integrating electronics components (e.g.

actuators, sensors, cameras) into hardware design.

* Experience owning problems that sit within broad problem spaces, across the product life cycle.

* We want to see examples where you've lead a multidisciplinary teams: mechanical, electrical software, perception etc and have driven design, verification deployment and iteration.

* Being able to write (embedded) code in C or C++ is a plus.

* B.Sc.

in mechanical, mechatronics, or robotics engineering or similar experience is a nice to have.