Lead Mechanical Engineer

Senior Mechanical Engineering Lead | Edison, New Jersey. Onsite.Our client is a start-up based in Edison, NJ is building a complex electromechanical surgical system from the ground up, and needs an engineer's engineer to lead the mechanical work.This is not a role where you are handed a detailed spec and asked to execute it. You will take a rendering, a sketch or a problem statement from the CEO and turn it into a working prototype quickly, with your own hands and alongside a small team of engineers. Then you will own the path from that prototype to a production-grade unit that can be manufactured at scale.What you will doTake concepts, mockups and loose constraints and produce prototypes fast, built to survive trade shows and surgeon visits, not just the bench.Design precision mechanisms and multi-axis actuation where accuracy, stiffness, calibration and safety are the product itself, not an afterthought.Look critically at everything you are given. If the right answer is to throw it away and do it better, make that call and do it.Lead junior engineers by example: in CAD, in the lab and at the machine with them, getting the most out of each of them and hiring more as the team grows.Work across software, controls, quality and regulatory so that what you build can be verified, documented and submitted with confidence.Sit at the table on executive-level decisions about the product and how it gets built.Who this suitsYou have led mechanical engineers in industry while staying hands on. Supervising student projects does not count here.You have built highly custom devices from a problem statement and vague constraints, in a small company or startup, and they were accurate, beautiful and mechanically sound. If your instinct is to assemble off-the-shelf parts and call it done, this is not the role.You understand mechanisms, kinematics and actuation deeply enough to reason through a design problem on a whiteboard rather than exporting a CAD model and finding a tool to do it for you.You have made transformational change at least once: looked at an existing system, decided it was wrong, started from scratch and shipped something better.You have taken a device through industrialisation and launch, or been central to it, and you want to lead that here rather than learn it.You have grit, you want to beat the competition, and you put the company's product ahead of your own side projects.Your background might be surgical or medical devices, humanoid or field robotics, prosthetics, early-stage aerospace or space hardware, motorsport, scientific instrumentation or animatronics. Medical device experience helps. A fast-cycle, build-it-yourself track record matters more.PracticalitiesOnsite in Edison, NJ. You will be in the lab with the hardware most days, so a commute you can sustain matters.Compensation is set for the person, not a band. We are open to strong engineers from outside medical devices.How to applyApply with a CV and, if you have one, something you built from scratch: photos, a drawing, a short write-up on jordan@thisiscruxx.comCruxx is the retained search partner on this hire. Direct applications only.