Robotics Engineer - Integration & Control (m/f/d)

Prefiro; Karlsruhe; On-site; EUR 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Prefiro is seeking a robotics software engineer to integrate robots into our stack and bring real-field deployments to life on farms in Germany.

You will work with ROS 2, C++17 and Python, contribute to trajectory planning and real-time control, and help scale the system across multiple robots.

Join a small, motivated team delivering practical robotics solutions from prototype to production with direct impact on harvest operations.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of professional robotics experience, with hands-on work on real robots.
• Strong C++17 and Python 3 skills.
• Experience with ROS 2 nodes, lifecycle, QoS, and launch files.
• Knowledge of trajectory controllers and trajectory planning.
• Fluent English in technical contexts.

Responsibilities

• Integrate robots and IO into the robotics stack – from startup and service to error handling and recovery.
• Work on MPC-based trajectory planning and optimal control: from approach to implementation on the robot in real time.
• Help optimize cycle times in real-world applications
• Scale the stack from one robot module to several per machine: networking, robot setup and calibration.
• Tune the robot computers for real-time control: Docker, CPU pinning, ROS 2 scheduling and multithreading.
• Build remote access, data collection and robotics CI/CD (e.g. rosbag-playback tests) to improve the robots with real field data.
• Review code, contribute to architecture decisions and debug the stack as a team.
• Run the robots during pre-season field tests and the harvest season.

Skills

C++17

Python 3

ROS 2

Trajectory planning

Kinematics & dynamics

CMake/colcon / Git

Real-time Linux scheduling

English fluency

Education

Master's Degree in robotics, mechatronics, mechanical engineering, computer science, or related

Tools

URDF

Pinocchio

Job description

Your responsibilities

• Integrate robots and IO into the robotics stack – from startup and service to error handling and recovery.
• Work on MPC-based trajectory planning and optimal control: from approach to implementation on the robot in real time.
• Help optimize cycle times in real-world applications
• Scale the stack from one robot module to several per machine: networking, robot setup and calibration.
• Tune the robot computers for real-time control: Docker, CPU pinning, ROS 2 scheduling and multithreading.
• Build remote access, data collection and robotics CI/CD (e.g. rosbag-playback tests) to improve the robots with real field data.
• Review code, contribute to architecture decisions and debug the stack as a team.
• Run the robots during pre-season field tests and the harvest season.

What you bring

• Master's Degree in robotics, mechatronics, mechanical engineering, computer science, or a related technical field.
• At least 2 years of professional experience in robotics, including hands-on work with real robots (not only simulation).
• Strong modern C++ (C++17) and Python 3.
• Hands-on experience with ROS 2 (ideally Jazzy): nodes, lifecycle nodes, executors, QoS, launch files.
• Experience with trajectory controllers and trajectory planning.
• Solid grounding in robot kinematics and dynamics (URDF, Pinocchio or similar).
• Proven experience with optimal control and model predictive control for trajectory planning; reinforcement learning is a plus.
• Comfortable with CMake/colcon builds and Git on Linux.
• Experience with real-time robot control and an understanding of soft real-time constraints on Linux (scheduling, latency, threading).
• Fluent English, our working language.

Nice to have

• Industrial arms, especially Denso SCARA (b-CAP, RC8) or Universal Robots.
• MoveIt 2 or Ruckig for motion planning.
• Docker, GitLab CI and automated testing (GoogleTest, launch_testing).
• DDS or Zenoh tuning and multi-robot setups.
• Debugging tools such as RViz, Foxglove, PlotJuggler or Nsight Systems.
• Field deployment with systemd, tmux and shell scripting.
• Basic German.

What we offer

• Real fields from your first season. Your code runs on our machines on farms in Germany.
• Short way from code to robot. New ideas usually run on the real machine within a few days.
• A problem worth solving. Green asparagus is still harvested entirely by hand.
• A small, motivated team that gets a lot done together. When you join, we're 8 full-time, plus 2 interns and a working student.
• Open culture, flat hierarchies. We are still early, so your opinion counts in technical decisions.
• Lunch and coffee together in the kitchen in our hall.
• Employee stock options.