Founding edge perception engineer
Jetson Orin, DeepStream, Holoscan, TensorRT. Fuse thermal and high-speed cameras, ultrasonic, MPI and press signals into one model of forging soundness at the cell.
Careers
Work on software that decides a stroke of 2,500 tonnes.
Forgiron is pre-launch and building its founding team. The four roles below are the ones we expect to open first, written as honestly as we can about the stage: there is no office to show, no customer list, and the first job is a paid pilot on one cell.
Illustrative scenario: Cell F-2 · 2,500 t closed-die press · 42CrMo4 connecting rod, one lot, one approval gate
Founding roles
Where we need people
Role descriptions, not an openings count. Each is a founding role.
Founding controls and OT integration engineer
Induction, press, die-spray, heat-treat and robot connectors. Guarded writes, interlocks, rollback and the audit log.
Founding simulation engineer
Omniverse forge-line twin, forging FEM for metal-forming, thermal and die stress, physics-informed surrogates with Modulus, cuOpt sequencing.
Founding forging process or die engineer
Someone who has run a press line or a die shop. Translate forge-operator and die-engineer craft into process windows, metrics and acceptance tests for design partners.
How we work
Six things about working here
The forge is the customer
We measure ourselves on scrap, die changes, energy per heat and inspection escapes, the plant's own numbers.
Nothing unlabelled
A design target is called a design target. A scenario is called a scenario. We do not round up.
Safety is a feature
The policy engine, approvals, interlocks and the audit log are the product, not overhead.
Simulate first
A move is rehearsed on the twin before it is written. So are our own changes.
Write it down
Every decision, every run, every correction goes into a record someone else can read.
Go to the forge
The craft we are encoding lives on the floor, next to the press. We go there.
Run timeline · scenario
What you would be building
Every Forgiron run is an ordered, inspectable sequence. This is run_7c2e41 on Cell F-2 · 2,500 t closed-die press · 42CrMo4 connecting rod. Scenario completes in 10 steps with one approval gate. Surface temperature held at 1,205 °C with a 14 °C core-to-surface spread, fill predicted and confirmed complete, one lap precursor at the flash land cleared by a blow-energy trim, lot L-80412 released with full genealogy.
run_7c2e41
Cell F-2 · 2,500 t closed-die press · 42CrMo4 connecting rod
illustrative scenario
SUCCEEDED
-
01
ingest.order
SUCCEEDED
0.6 s
Plant Orchestrator · Pulled the part spec for the 42CrMo4 connecting rod from MES: forging window 1,180 to 1,230 °C, two-blow closed-die schedule, flash land 2.4 mm, temper to 28 to 32 HRC, 1,200 pieces. Locked the qualified process envelope.
-
02
twin.simulate
SUCCEEDED
52 s
Forge Twin · Simulated 24 candidate heat-and-stroke recipes on the as-forged twin for soak time, blow energy and spray timing, ranked on predicted fill, lap risk at the flash land, die load and kWh per piece.
-
03
heat.soak
SUCCEEDED
2 m 10 s
Heat-and-Billet · Induction power on IH-2 stepped down 4% in the final soak stage as the pyrometer read 1,205 °C at the surface. Core-to-surface spread estimated at 14 °C against a 20 °C limit, no overheat, scale growth inside the window.
-
04
die.spray
SUCCEEDED
48 s
Die-and-Lube · Lower-die spray dose raised 6% and cooling extended 0.3 s as die surface temperature climbed through 240 °C. Heat-check growth on cavity 2 flagged at 0.31 of the die-change threshold.
-
05
approve.human
APPROVAL
46 s
Plant Orchestrator · Recipe #9 moves second-blow energy 3% below the standing schedule. Press-schedule changes stay supervised on this part family, so the step was held for the shift forging engineer and approved at 05:47:31.
-
06
forge.stroke
SUCCEEDED
1 m 36 s
Forge-and-Press · Two-blow schedule executed with the approved energy. High-speed vision and force curves confirmed complete fill on the first ten pieces; predicted lap risk at the flash land fell from 0.27 to 0.08.
-
07
inspect.fuse
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Defect-and-Inspect · Eight cameras, two thermal cameras and the ultrasonic station fused at the edge. One lap precursor at the flash land on piece 212 flagged and cleared by a 1.5% blow-energy trim inside the approved envelope; the piece was routed to MPI and passed.
-
08
handle.transfer
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Robot-and-Handling · Press-to-trim transfer planned and executed by the handling robot at 11 s per piece, temperature loss in transfer 38 °C against a 60 °C limit, interlock zones clear throughout.
-
09
heat.treat
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Trim-and-Heat · Temper furnace HT-1 zone 2 trimmed 5 °C against the predicted hardness from the recorded heat and stroke history. First hardness checks read 30 HRC, inside 28 to 32.
-
10
lot.release
SUCCEEDED
1 m 20 s
Quality-and-Conformance · Lot L-80412 released: genealogy written (billet lot, heat curve, stroke record, die cycles, inspection map, approvals, temper record) and dispositioned against IATF 16949 criteria with cited evidence for the quality engineer's sign-off.
Process
How hiring runs
- Write to us. What you would own, what you have built or run, and why the forge.
- A conversation. An hour on the problem, not a quiz.
- A working session. A real design question from the backlog, worked together.
- References and an offer. Founding terms, discussed openly.
Accelerated computing
Physical AI, at the press
A stroke lasts a fraction of a second and a billet cools while it waits. Perception has to be local, deterministic and fast, so Forgiron runs GPU inference at the plant edge and keeps training, simulation and optimisation in the cloud or on-prem.
Edge perception
8 to 24 cameras per line plus thermal, ultrasonic, MPI, press and ram streams fused at the cell. Sub-100 ms visual alerts and sub-500 ms recommendations are the design targets. Jetson Thor is planned for higher sensor density.
Model serving
Defect, ultrasonic and MPI fusion, die-wear, heating, press-fill, property and disposition models behind one orchestrator at the plant edge, routed by latency, tenant, sensitivity and cost, with canary rollout by cell.
Training
Multimodal defect, die-wear, heating, press-fill, property and quality-disposition models trained on thermal images, high-speed vision, ultrasonic and MPI signals, press curves and engineer corrections. Dedicated training capacity is planned.
Forge-line twin
Billet heating, die thermal state, press stroke, fill, stress, die load and robot handling simulated before the stroke. GPU forging FEM is the workload; physics-informed surrogates are planned so recipes rank at production cadence.
Synthetic data
Rare lap, fold, underfill, crack and die-wear scenarios generated and validated against real inspection distributions before promotion. Planned.
Optimisation
Die allocation, press sequencing, heating batches, heat-treat queues, robot and takt coordination and inspection routing.
Robot handling
Hot billet, forging, die and trim handling skills trained and validated in simulation before they run next to a press.
GPU ETL
Daily features from thermal, video, ultrasonic, MPI, press and genealogy data for retraining, drift detection and yield, scrap, die-life and energy benchmarks.
Autonomy
Four levels, set per agent and per tag
A forge does not go from manual to unattended in one step. Forgiron makes the level explicit, auditable and reversible at any time. The first release runs shadow mode, then assist mode, then bounded autonomy on low-risk actions. Press control stays supervised until the part family is qualified.
| Level | What the agent does | What the human does | Where it sits in a pilot |
|---|---|---|---|
| L1 · Shadow | Reads thermal, vision, ultrasonic, MPI, press, die, robot and MES signals; predicts and recommends; writes nothing | Runs the cell as today; compares predictions to inspection and engineer outcomes | Shadow mode, baseline 30 to 60 days |
| L2 · Assist | Proposes heating, press, die-lube, routing and handling actions with evidence, confidence, envelope and rollback path | Approves each action in the review console | Assist mode, the remainder of a 90 to 180 day pilot |
| L3 · Bounded | Executes pre-approved low-risk actions: inspection routing, lube timing, heating and soak adjustments, robot path variants, inside PLC and safety limits | Approves press-schedule changes, die changes and lot release | Graduated autonomy, after audited accuracy and ROI |
| L4 · Scaled | Supervised press-schedule adaptation for qualified part families, across cells and sites | Sets the envelope; reviews the shift record and the evaluation results | Planned; after golden-dataset evaluation, simulation validation and quality sign-off |
Guardrails
An agent that can move a press schedule needs a leash
Forgiron writes to production equipment. Every capability is scoped, every write is policy-checked against the qualified envelope, and every action is written to an append-only audit log the forge owns.
- Bounded action space. Each agent writes only to an explicit tag allow-list, inside per-tag rate and magnitude limits and the qualified process envelope for the part family.
- Policy engine before every write. Autonomy level, shift, part family, interlock state and operator presence are evaluated before a setpoint moves.
- Human-in-the-loop gates. Press-schedule changes, die changes and lot release wait for a named approver. Safety-critical press control stays guarded by PLC interlocks and engineer approval until qualification evidence supports more.
- Immutable audit log. Append-only and exportable. Every action records source evidence, the approved process envelope, confidence, estimated yield, scrap, die-life and energy impact, rollback path, approver and lot scope.
- Hard fallback. Loss of the edge node, the network or a model returns control to the furnace, press or die controller's last known-good state. Interlocks are never in Forgiron's path.
- Tenant and die-IP isolation. Die designs, part drawings, alloy recipes and quality records never cross a customer boundary. On-prem deployment is available for sensitive producers.
Compliance posture
| Item | Scope | Status |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type I | Cloud control plane | QUEUED Planned, first 6 months |
| SOC 2 Type II | Cloud control plane | QUEUED Planned, 6 to 12 months |
| SSO and RBAC | Console and approvals | QUEUED Planned, 6 to 12 months |
| AS9100 and NADCAP assurance packages | Disposition and genealogy evidence | QUEUED Planned, 6 to 12 months; not a certification claim |
| Standards-cited reasoning | AS9100, IATF 16949, NADCAP, ASTM documents | RUNNING In the design, every answer cites its source |
| Per-tenant and die-IP isolation | Recipes, die designs, models, memory | RUNNING In the design from day one |
| On-prem and plant-edge deployment | Sensitive producers | RUNNING Design option |
FAQ
Straight answers
The questions plant directors, forging engineers and quality engineers ask in the first meeting.
Yes, but only within an explicit tag allow-list with per-tag rate and magnitude limits, inside the qualified process envelope, and only at the autonomy level your plant has set. Design partners start in shadow mode, where Forgiron writes nothing. Press-schedule changes stay supervised by a named forging engineer until the part family is qualified.
Control returns to the furnace, press or die controller's last known-good state. Forgiron is a supervisory layer on top of the PLCs and interlocks you already run, never a replacement for them, so an outage degrades the cell to its current way of running, not to a stop.
Advisory recommendations start from the physics-based twin and the part spec in the first weeks. Defect, die-wear and heating prediction improve as cell history and labelled outcomes accumulate per part family. The first training sets are sized at 2 million labelled frames and signals, 20,000 heat and press cycles and 10,000 die-life events per design-partner cohort, all design targets.
Only if you choose cloud training. Die designs, part drawings, recipes, process models and quality records are isolated per tenant and never used to train another customer's models. A fully on-prem deployment at the plant edge is available for sensitive producers, and federated learning across sites is planned and waits on data-rights agreements.
You are, the same as with any control strategy, which is why every write is policy-checked, bounded, logged and reversible, and why anything above your risk threshold waits for a named approver. The audit log records the request, the evidence, the envelope applied and the human decision.
A paid pilot of 90 to 180 days on one cell, scoped to a single wedge with a success metric written into the order form: defect-detection accuracy, scrap reduction, die-change reduction, energy reduction or first-pass-quality improvement. The first 30 to 60 days baseline scrap, die life, energy, inspection escapes and takt in shadow mode.