Staff Robotics Architect – Platform Software

Location: Fremont, CA — hybrid, three days onsite per week
Employment: Full-time

We’re partnering with a robotics company developing humanoid platforms for real-world industrial applications to hire a Staff Robotics Architect – Platform Software.

This technical leadership role will shape the controls, networking, compute, and firmware architecture of next-generation robotic systems. Working across electrical, mechanical, software, perception, safety, and controls teams, you’ll ensure core subsystems integrate into reliable, performant, and scalable robots.

This is an individual contributor role with significant architecture ownership and influence across product development.

What You’ll Do

• Own end-to-end robot network and controls architecture, integrating sensing, perception, compute, actuation, and safety systems.

• Define technical direction and interfaces across robotic subsystems and engineering teams.

• Lead trade studies and architecture reviews, balancing performance, functional safety, complexity, manufacturability, cost, and reliability.

• Partner with controls and simulation teams to ground architectural decisions in modeling and performance analysis.

• Translate architecture into testable, traceable requirements with systems engineering, software, test, and integration teams.

• Use field performance, user needs, and R&D findings to guide platform improvements and long-term product direction.

• Support new platform development and major improvements to existing robotic systems.

What You’ll Bring

• 8+ years of robotics platform software development experience, including senior or lead engineering responsibilities.

• 5+ years of controls system development experience.

• 3+ years of network and compute system development experience.

• 3+ years of firmware development experience spanning embedded or bare-metal systems through network integration.

• Hands-on experience implementing robot controls, such as whole-body, joint, or actuator control.

• Experience designing network architectures for complex robotic systems.

• A strong foundation in software engineering, robot kinematics, dynamics, controls, and system modeling.

• Experience delivering complex electromechanical robots from early concept through production or field deployment.

• Understanding of system tradeoffs involving cost, power, thermal constraints, sensing, compute, and safety.

• Familiarity with functional safety concepts, robotic product certification, FMEA/FMECA, and hazard analysis.

• Strong communication skills and the ability to influence technical decisions across multidisciplinary teams.

Preferred Experience

• Architecture ownership for humanoid, legged, mobile manipulation, or high-degree-of-freedom robotic platforms.

• Reinforcement learning techniques applied to robot control.

• Perception pipelines, real-time control systems, and safety-rated architectures.

• Simulation tools such as MuJoCo, Gazebo, or equivalent, including their use in design and validation.

• Collaborative software development tools such as GitHub.

• A master’s degree or PhD in Robotics, Mechatronics, Computer Science, or a related field.

• Experience mentoring engineers and supporting a collaborative engineering culture.

Additional Details

• Occasional travel to other company offices, conferences, and company events.

• Relocation assistance and immigration sponsorship may be available, subject to role eligibility and company policy.

• No direct reports.

This opportunity offers substantial influence over the architecture of advanced robotic platforms, connecting software and controls decisions directly to physical product performance and real-world deployment.