Robotics Software Engineer, Founding Team

A fast-growing robotics company is looking for a Roboticist to join its founding engineering team in New York. This is a highly hands-on role for someone with strong experience building robotics systems that work reliably in real-world environments, not just in simulation. The engineer will take ownership of robotic system development from the ground up and help build autonomous manufacturing systems for high-stakes production settings.

About the Company

The company is building AI-powered autonomous manufacturing systems focused on solving critical bottlenecks in the U.S. defense industrial base. Its goal is to create an intelligence layer that enables machines such as robotic arms to operate continuously and autonomously, improving manufacturing efficiency, scalability, and resilience.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end programming of robotic arms, translating high-level goals into reliable real-world behavior.
• Design and deploy robotics systems integrating hardware, perception, and control algorithms.
• Build and optimize core robotics capabilities including motion planning, SLAM, and system control.
• Develop control systems, inverse kinematics, and safety-critical logic for robust operation around expensive machinery.
• Lead architectural decisions across the robotics stack, from software frameworks to hardware integration.
• Own the sim-to-real pipeline to ensure models and algorithms transfer effectively into production environments.
• Prototype, test, and iterate rapidly on physical systems using performance data to improve reliability and efficiency.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in robotics development, especially in SLAM and motion planning.
• Strong hands-on experience building robotics systems for real-world deployment.
• Solid background in control systems, robotic arm programming, and system integration.
• Experience working across hardware and software in fast-moving engineering environments.
• Proficiency with ROS, ROS2, C++, and Python.
• Ability to work with high ownership in a small, intense, in-person founding team.

Preferred Background

• Experience with sim-to-real workflows.
• Exposure to advanced ML approaches such as vision-language-action models in robotics applications.
• Comfort operating in high-intensity startup environments with strong ownership and fast iteration.