Maker-in-Residence — The Deep-Tech Foundry

Raghu University | Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh | Full-Time | In office

About Us

Raghu University is a newly formed Deemed to Be University in Visakhapatnam, founded by an entrepreneur who also built a 300-person enterprise SaaS company serving clients across 12 countries.

The Deep-Tech Foundry is where students take ideas from screen to physical product. We’re setting up a prototyping lab with 3D printers, PCB fabrication, soldering stations, CNC machines, and edge AI hardware. The goal: student projects that become startups with real, shippable hardware products.

The Role A student team has an idea for a water quality monitoring device for aquaculture farms. They can write the software. But who helps them design the enclosure, fabricate the PCB, solder the sensor array, 3D-print the housing, and CNC-mill the mounting bracket? Who turns their screen mockup into something a farmer can hold in their hands?

That’s you.

The Maker-in-Residence runs the prototyping lab inside The Foundry. Your job is to help student teams go from working code to working hardware — the kind you can demo to a customer, pitch to an investor, or ship to a first user. You’re not maintaining equipment for a college lab. You’re building an environment where student hardware startups are born.

What You’ll Do

- Mentor student teams on hardware prototyping end-to-end: concept → CAD → 3D print / CNC → electronics design → PCB fabrication → assembly → working prototype
- Help teams design and fabricate custom PCBs — schematic, layout, fabrication, soldering, testing, iteration
- Run 3D printing operations: help students prepare CAD files, select materials, optimise prints, troubleshoot failures
- Guide CNC operations when needed (we have CNC specialists on campus — you coordinate with them for student projects that require milling)




- Bridge hardware and software: help teams integrate sensors, microcontrollers, and edge AI devices into physical products. A trained AI model is useless until it lives inside something a user can touch.
- Push teams toward startup-grade prototypes, not science fair demos: “This can’t have exposed wires if you’re demoing to a customer. Let’s design a proper enclosure.”
- Manage the prototyping lab: inventory, consumables (filament, solder, components, PCB substrates), equipment maintenance, workspace organisation
- Conduct safety inductions: soldering, 3D printing, ESD protection, workshop discipline
- Participate in weekly standups and monthly Demo Days — help teams present hardware that works, not just slides about hardware

What You Won’t Do

- Sit in a storeroom waiting for requests
- Teach lectures or grade lab exams
- Fill out equipment utilisation reports
- Manage CNC operations (we have dedicated specialists for that)
- Report to any academic department

Who You Are

- You’ve built physical products — not just one-off prototypes, but things that were designed to be used by someone. You have photos or videos to show.
- You’ve designed and fabricated PCBs: schematic to layout to working board. KiCad, Eagle, or Altium.
- You’re comfortable with 3D printing (FDM). Slicing, material selection, troubleshooting.
- You can solder confidently — through-hole and basic SMD
- You understand embedded systems: Arduino, ESP32, Raspberry Pi, STM32, or similar. Firmware,



datasheets, serial communication.
- You know what CNC can do and when to use it, even if you’re not operating the machine yourself
- You think in terms of “is this ready to show a customer?” not just “does it work on the bench?”
- You’re patient with beginners but push advanced teams toward production-grade quality
- 2–6 years in hardware prototyping, product engineering, electronics design, or a hardware startup

Nice to Have

- Experience at a hardware startup where you took a product from prototype to manufacturing
- Experience with NVIDIA Jetson or other edge AI deployment platforms
- DFM (Design for Manufacturing) awareness — helping teams think about how their prototype becomes a product
- CAD expertise (Fusion 360, SolidWorks, FreeCAD)
- Enclosure design for electronics products
- Experience running or working in a makerspace or prototyping lab
- Sensor integration for IoT / industrial / agriculture applications

What We Offer

- Compensation commensurate with experience
- A prototyping lab you help set up from scratch — you’ll shape the layout, workflow, and culture
- A team around you: software mentoring, GTM strategy, and operations are handled by others. You own hardware prototyping.
- The chance to help student teams build hardware startups — not just projects, but products
- Visakhapatnam — India’s emerging AI capital. A growing tech ecosystem and a city that’s genuinely pleasant to live in.

How to Apply

Send to [email protected]:

- Photos or videos of hardware you’ve built (mandatory)
- A few lines on: what’s the most complete physical product you’ve taken from idea to working prototype?
- Why helping students turn projects into products sounds like your kind of work

No formal resume needed. Show us what you’ve made.

📌 Maker In Residence (Andhra Pradesh)
🏢 Raghu Engineering College
📍 Andhra Pradesh