Senior Software Engineer, Robotics Platform
AI summary of the role
Chef Robotics seeks a Senior Software Engineer to architect and build the next-generation robotics platform (compute, OS, middleware, networking) for its fleet of food-assembly robots.
What you’ll do
- Architect and build the next-generation robotics platform from a clean sheet, spanning compute, OS, middleware, and networking.
- Build infrastructure and frameworks for robot software lifecycle management, from provisioning to fleet-wide updates at scale.
- Lead an upgrade of the autonomy software OS and middleware.
- Integrate new robot hardware, sensors, and cameras, and monitor performance.
What you’ll bring
- Strong experience and expertise in Linux systems.
- Strong systems programming in C, C++, or Rust (Python a plus).
- Excellent software engineering fundamentals.
- Experience leading and shipping complex software projects.
Technologies
Linux · C · C++ · Rust · Python · ROS 2 · DDS · OpenCV · CUDA · TCP · UDP · PTP
About Chef Robotics
AI-enabled robots that automate high-mix food assembly for manufacturers using adaptable manipulation software and a robotics-as-a-service deployment model.
Series A · 100–200 people
Source and classification
Internal deployment & tooling · Evidence for this classification:
"forward-deployed" models) — runs on: robot compute, OS, middleware, and networking. You'll own it, making it a stable, performant base for our perception and robotics algorithms. The work spans everything from low-level system software to high-bandwidth sensor logging, debugging, and performance analysis, in close partnership with senior robotics and perception engineers. Our next-generation platform is greenfield: we're taking everything we've learned from the platform running in production today and designing the next one from a clean sheet — run as an applied hypothesis → experiment → learn loop. You'll be central to that. We want architects who work full-stack — from system design down to the metal — not armchair architects. Engineers who design a system and live with its low-level consequences, who feel the pain a design inflicts downstream and account for it from the start.
More from the job description
Chef Robotics is bringing AI into the physical world, starting with one of the world’s largest industries: food manufacturing. Food production faces one of the most severe labor shortages in the US, with more than 1 million open jobs today and demand continuing to grow. Our robots help manufacturers automate repetitive food-preparation and assembly tasks so they can increase throughput, improve consistency, and keep production onshore. Today, Chef robots operate in production facilities across North America and Europe, serving customers including Amy’s Kitchen, gategroup, and CookUnity. Our robots have made over 100 million servings in production, creating the world’s largest proprietary dataset for AI-powered manipulation of deformable food. Every meal our robots produce makes the system smarter. Backed by leading investors including Avataar Ventures, Construct Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Promus Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins, we’re scaling rapidly with a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model and long-term customer partnerships. Our team includes engineers and leaders from Google, Cruise, Tesla, Amazon Robotics, Dexterity, Bear Robotics, Saildrone, and Zoox, united by a mission to build intelligent machines that solve meaningful problems in the real world. If you’re excited about solving hard problems, creating real customer impact, and shipping systems that operate in production [... source excerpt omitted ...] is the foundation layer our entire robotics stack — and the ML models we run on the robot (our "forward-deployed" models) — runs on: robot compute, OS, middleware, and networking. You'll own it, making it a stable, performant base for our perception and robotics algorithms. The work spans everything from low-level system software to high-bandwidth sensor logging, debugging, and performance analysis, in close partnership with senior robotics and perception engineers. Our next-generation platform is greenfield: we're taking everything we've learned from the platform running in production today and designing the next one from a clean sheet — run as an applied hypothesis → experim [... source excerpt omitted ...] or a specific set of strengths, we won't pigeonhole you into a narrow lane. You're free — encouraged — to contribute anywhere in the company you can make it better. In this role, you will: Architect and build our next-generation robotics platform — the foundation layer our robotics stack and forward-deployed models run on, spanning compute, OS, middleware, and networking — taking the lessons from the platform in production today into a clean-sheet design. Build the infrastructure and frameworks that carry a robot across its whole software lifecycle — provisioning a new instance so it joins the fleet, then keeping its software updated from there on — working with manufacturing
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