Senior Robotics Platform Software Engineer

San Francisco
Engineering – Software /
Full Time /
On-site
Chef Robotics is on a mission to accelerate the advent of intelligent machines in the physical world. As the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT has shown, AI has the potential to drive immense change. However, we believe AI’s biggest impact will be in the physical world, given industries like manufacturing, food, and transportation represent 90% of global GDP. We're starting with food, with a goal to put an intelligent robot in every commercial kitchen in the world. We have signed multiple multi-year contracts with various large food companies and we are growing fast. We're backed by investors like Kleiner Perkins, Construct, Bloomberg BETA and Promus Ventures. We have a great team, where you will be surrounded by talented engineers and tech leaders from companies like Cruise, Zoox, Google, Verb Surgical, Tesla, Nuro, Vicarious, Amazon Robotics, Strateos, Built Robotics, Facebook, Plenty, Yelp, and Microsoft.

Chef is looking for a Robotics Platform Software Engineer to help us scale our fleet of robots. You will be making a large impact on a small team, ensuring our robot compute, OS, middleware, and networking provide a stable and performant platform for our autonomy software and algorithms. You'll be working on everything from low-level system software to high-bandwidth sensor data logging, debugging, and performance analysis. Ideal candidates will also be interested in overall product performance and work closely with senior robotics and perception engineers to debug, test, and release new autonomy features.

Responsibilities & Example Projects

    • Debug and fix difficult low-level systems software problems, e.g. with drivers, networking, Linux configuration.
    • Lead an upgrade of our autonomy software OS and middleware.
    • Investigate load and networking issues and increase performance of our perception and robotics algorithms.
    • Work with manufacturing to develop processes for provisioning robotic systems at scale.
    • Help integrate new robot hardware, sensors, and cameras, and monitor performance.
    • Contribute to overall software architecture design and standards and test and release processes.
    • Champion engineering excellence, ensuring high-quality, well-structured, and well-tested code.

Requirements

    • BS in computer science, robotics, or equivalent experience.
    • Strong experience and expertise in Linux systems, with at least 4+ years experience building complex software in a Linux environment.
    • Excellent software engineering fundamentals.
    • Experience leading and shipping complex software projects.
    • Understanding of network and time protocols, e.g. TCP, UDP, PTP.
    • Knowledge of build systems and tooling, performance optimization, and memory and network profiling.

Bonus points

    • Robotics experience.
    • Experience with the robotics tech stack, e.g. Linux, ROS, OpenCV, CUDA.
    • Experience with full-stack web engineering and infrastructure.
    • Experience in systems engineering or product management.
    • Experience with basic mechatronics and electronics.
    • Experience leading projects or people in a tech lead or similar capacity.
$125,000 - $225,000 a year
Chef is an early stage startup, and equity will be a large component of the entire compensation package. We'll increase salary and cash compensation over time as the company raises more capital. Starting base salary is subject to seniority.

In addition to salary and early-stage equity, we also offer a generous benefits package including medical/dental/vision insurance, commuter benefits, flexible PTO, catered lunch, and 401(k) matching.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizen status, uniform service member and veteran status, marital status, age, pregnancy status, protected medical condition, genetic information, disability, or any other protected status.

Multiple studies have found that a higher percentage of women and BIPOC candidates won't apply if they don't meet every listed qualification. Chef values candidates of all backgrounds. If you find yourself excited by our mission but you don't check every box in the description, we encourage you to apply anyway!