Mechanical Engineer

Monumental is automating on-site construction with robotics and software. Our mission is to make construction software-defined and autonomous - a future where beautiful, bespoke buildings go up in a single day, with minimal labour.

We're a growing team of engineers, operators and technicians from companies like Palantir, Qualcomm, Dyson, Shopify, Tesla, Meta, WaveOptics and Google DeepMind. It's still the early days of building the company, and this is a chance to make an outsized impact on a problem that matters. From day one, you’ll be working with an experienced founding team backed by top-tier investors.

Monumental is based in the city centre of Amsterdam, in a beautiful facility with a fully equipped workshop and robot testing floor. We build the whole stack in-house - hardware and software. We're explicitly not a hybrid or remote-first company - you can't build robots or walls from home, so we're onsite five days a week.

Read more on why we believe you should spend your time working on construction, and learn about our vision https://www.monumental.co/our-vision/and company https://www.monumental.co/about/. You might enjoy Based in Europe’s film on how we’re fixing Europe’s housing shortage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-Q2F0Fcx4A, or this video by Andreas Klinger of what our office looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOo8n19XEns.

About the role

We are looking for a mechanical engineer to join our team of hardware and software engineers, working 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 contributing across 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.

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. 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.

What you’ll do

Imagine a fleet of autonomous robots rolling onto a construction site in the morning and by sundown, a fully built, beautiful home stands ready for a family to move in. That’s the future we’re building.

Today, our robot systems are already constructing real homes across the Netherlands at scale. But we’re just getting started. Your work won’t be about incremental improvements, you’ll tackle broad and novel problems that unlock autonomous construction:

• 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 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.

• Getting hands-on in the field: you’ll join deployments where we’re building real homes, whilst stress-testing systems and uncovering the edge-case problems that can only be found in the field.

What we’re looking for

• 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 series volume.

• 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.

• Expertise in multi-physics simulations (FEA) applied to structural designing problems, e.g. Comsol and Ansys, but also being able to do hand calculations when that makes the most sense.

• Experience selecting, sourcing, and integrating electronics components (e.g. actuators, sensors, cameras) into hardware design.

• 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

Why Monumental?

Joining Monumental means being at the forefront of a movement aimed at making significant strides in the construction industry. Here, your work has the potential to impact not just the company but the future of how we build. If you're driven by innovation, eager to tackle complex challenges, and ready to make a tangible difference, we want to hear from you.

For open applications (where you don’t see an exact role match), please reach out to us at: iwanttojoin@monumental.co - share with us the most interesting or challenging project you’ve worked on, why you want to join and your CV or portfolio.

Unfortunately, we do not currently offer internships.

If you don’t meet all the qualifications here but are excited about Monumental and feel you’d still be able to help us solve difficult problems, do get in touch. We welcome generalists who focus on outcomes and are eager to learn on the job.