Lead Robotics Engineer

The Company

Founded in 2025 by Sam Rogers, who grew up managing 6,000 head on a North Queensland cattle station, GrazeMate builds autonomous drones that move and monitor cattle across the world's largest properties. We're replacing helicopters and motorbikes with drones that herd cattle, count herds, and monitor pasture on their own. Helicopter mustering is expensive, dangerous, and still misses cattle. Our drones launch from a dock, fly the paddock, do the work, and come home. The only pilot is our RL models.

We went through YC (W26) and raised a seed round from the best investors in the valley. Our team is small and highly technical, and we're already working with some of the largest ranches in the world. Engineering is based in Sydney, but the work happens everywhere. Expect to write code at a desk, in a truck, and in the dirt. We work hard because our ranchers do.

We have a team of 6 which is growing steadily, including Computer Vision, Robotics, AI Engineers and a Chief of Staff. We are looking for a Lead Robotics Engineer who will lead technical decisions and a small engineering team. While you will stay hands-on in this role, we expect you to take on some people leadership responsibilities.

The role

You will build GrazeMate's robotics stack, from control architecture through to fleet orchestration, and lead a small team. This is the most senior technical hire on the team right now and you will coach and mentor others.

You will design the control and coordination layers that let a single drone muster cattle across hundreds of kilometers. You will also own the systems that run fence-line and water-trough inspections, keep aircraft reliable across desert heat, tropical wet seasons, and everything in between, and ensure the whole stack holds up when it's deployed far from anyone who can help debug it.

What we're looking for

Must-haves:

• You have built something that customers have used
• Deep ROS expertise
• Strong control engineering fundamentals
• A degree in robotics, mechatronics, or electrical/electronic engineering
• A track record of shipping autonomous systems into production, not just research demos
• Comfortable owning a technical domain end-to-end with limited oversight

Strong advantages:

• Experience deploying robots in unstructured outdoor environments
• Exposure to drone autonomy or aerial robotics
• Prior work in deep tech or adjacent hardware/software systems
• Experience managing and coordinating engineering teams

The Work

• Control and orchestration layers to teach autonomous drones to herd cattle
• Navigation and path planning across large, unstructured outdoor environments
• Reliable autonomous operation for daily fence-line and water-trough inspection
• Fleet management architecture as GrazeMate scales across Australia and the US
• Onboard systems that perform under real-world conditions - variable terrain, weather, connectivity dropouts

The Setup

• Five days a week in the Sydney office
• Regular field deployments to cattle stations (domestic and potentially international)
• Work directly (and report to) the founder
• Competitive salary, meaningful early stage equity