Lead System Software Robotics Engineer

Our client is developing robotic systems designed for deployment in production data center environments and is seeking a Lead Systems Software Engineer to join a multidisciplinary engineering team.

This role sits at the intersection of robotics, systems software, firmware, networking, and infrastructure engineering. The successful candidate will take ownership of critical software systems powering a mobile robotic platform, contributing across the stack from low-level hardware interfaces and real-time control loops through to teleoperation, data collection, and fleet infrastructure.

This is a highly autonomous, hands-on engineering position suited to candidates who thrive in ambiguous environments and enjoy solving complex technical problems across multiple domains.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain core Rust-based software powering robotic systems.
• Build and optimize real-time control systems, robotics infrastructure, and inverse kinematics solutions.
• Develop and enhance teleoperation capabilities for remote robot control and data collection.
• Contribute to firmware and low-level systems development to improve reliability, performance, and stability.
• Integrate sensors, cameras, actuators, and hardware communication interfaces.
• Work across robotics software, networking, infrastructure, streaming systems, and hardware control layers.
• Support software hardening and production deployment into live customer environments.
• Take ownership of technical challenges as they arise and deliver end-to-end solutions.

Required Experience

• 4–10 years of experience in systems software, backend infrastructure, robotics software, or related engineering disciplines.
• Strong commercial experience developing software in Rust.
• Experience building and operating production-grade backend services, distributed systems, or real-time infrastructure.
• Experience working within robotics, autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, embedded systems, or hardware-adjacent environments.
• Experience owning systems from design through deployment and maintenance.

Preferred Background

Candidates may come from organisations focused on robotics, autonomous systems, industrial automation, advanced hardware, or similar engineering-intensive environments.

Particular interest in candidates with experience developing:

• Robotic manipulation systems
• 6-DOF robotic arms
• Teleoperation platforms
• Motion planning and control systems
• Inverse kinematics (IK) solvers
• Autonomous or semi-autonomous robotic platforms

Technical Requirements

Essential

• Rust
• Linux
• Networking fundamentals
• Real-time software systems
• Production backend services
• Systems-level debugging and performance optimisation

Desirable

• ROS2
• GStreamer
• FlatBuffers
• WebTransport
• Media over QUIC (MoQ)
• Axum
• Tokio
• Hardware integration and device communication

Hardware & Protocol Experience

Experience with one or more of:

• UART
• I2C
• CAN Bus
• EtherCAT

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate will:

• Be a strong systems thinker with a broad technical skill set.
• Take full ownership of projects and systems without requiring significant direction.
• Be comfortable operating across software, firmware, infrastructure, and hardware boundaries.
• Demonstrate a pragmatic approach to problem solving.
• Have experience delivering reliable software in production environments.

Education

• BS or MS in Computer Science, Robotics, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

Additional Requirements

• Must be able to work on-site in San Francisco 5–6 days per week.
• Must be authorised to work in the United States.
• Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.