Hardware Engineer
About the job
- Strong sensor integration experience is required.
- Solid microcontroller programming skills are required.
- Real breadboard and prototype-fabrication skills are required.
- Basic computer-aided design and 3D printing skills are required for light mechanical fabrication.
- Build the sensing side of growth rigs by selecting, wiring, and obtaining clean signals from thermocouples, optical sensors, cameras, and pressure sensors in noisy environments.
- Program the microcontrollers running the rigs, including sensor sampling, control loops, motor sequencing, and host communications.
- Breadboard and fabricate prototypes using protoboards, harnesses, simple carrier boards, 3D-printed brackets, and basic mechanical scaffolding.
- Implement the power side, including heater control, motor drives, proportional-integral-derivative loops, MOSFETs, isolation, and grounding.
- Take rigs from bench prototypes to reliable 72-hour crystal-growth operation and debug issues across the hardware and control stack.
- Materials science or machine learning background is a plus.
- Basic computer-aided design and 3D printing experience are desirable as light mechanical fabrication skills.
- A natural tinkerer who learns quickly, stays curious, works hard, and brings creativity to the bench is preferred.
About the company
Proto-Town is a hardware-focused campus in Caldwell County, Texas that helps hardware startups move from prototyping to testing and scaling. It leases land to established companies and provides room and board for early-stage founders, creating a resource-rich environment that lowers overhead and shorten development cycles. The campus offers build spaces, testing grounds, shared infrastructure, on-site machining through shops like Prickly Pear Prototypes, and housing, plus communal meals to foster collaboration among robotics, energy, and aerospace teams. Its goal is to speed hardware development by providing a one-stop ecosystem where teams can prototype, test, and scale faster than traditional labs or incubators.
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Bloomberg reported a $20 million seed round in April 2026.
- Early investors include Bill Ackman, Josh Kushner, and Fred Ehrsam.
- More than twenty residents lived there by July 2026, validating demand and traction.
What critics are saying
- Earthship's proposed nuclear research reactor faces federal, state, and local approvals before construction.
- Lockhart residents organized around Proto-Town's nuclear plans; backlash can delay permits into 2027.
- Proto-Town's 20-person team must monetize real estate and startup bets simultaneously.
What makes Proto-Town unique
- 1,200-acre Lockhart ranch enables prototyping, testing, and co-living on one site.
- Proto-Town pairs land leasing with venture backing, unlike standard incubators.
- On-site machining and shared infrastructure compress hardware cycles for robotics, energy, and aerospace.
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