Application Engineer

TAU Ventures; San Francisco (CA); On-site; Confidential; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Commuter benefits

Flexible PTO

Catered lunch

401(k) matching

Equity

Job summary

Chef Robotics is hiring an Application Engineer to bridge customers and engineering, spanning from early technical evaluation through deployment and ongoing success. You will drive customer impact, configure robotic systems, and collaborate across teams to ensure smooth on-site deployments.

This role emphasizes hands-on robotics work, real-world deployment, and growth opportunities within a fast-paced, customer-facing environment.

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Robotics, Mechanical Eng, Electrical Eng, CS or related field.
• 2+ years in applications engineering, deployment or field robotics.
• Experience with customer-facing technical roles and robotics systems.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Sales and Product teams during early customer engagements to assess needs and evaluate feasibility.
• Collaborate with customers' engineering and operations teams to understand processes and success metrics.
• Configure, test, and validate Chef’s robotic systems in the lab with R&D input.
• Lead and manage deployments across engineering, manufacturing and customer teams.
• Lead on-site deployments, including installation, testing, and production hardening.
• Provide post-deployment support and identify expansion opportunities.

Skills

Customer-facing

Robotics

Python

Linux/Unix

ROS

Travel up to 75%

Education

BS or MS in Robotics or related field

Tools

ROS

Linux

Python

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 every day, not just in the lab, you’ll feel at home at Chef.

About the Role

We are hiring an Application Engineer to serve as the vital link between our customers and our engineering teams. This role spans the full customer journey, from early technical evaluation through deployment, production ramp-up, and long-term success, driving both customer success and product excellence.

If you are excited by a mix of customer engagement, hands-on robotics engineering, and real-world deployment, this position offers a unique opportunity to directly shape how robotics is deployed in large-scale food production environments.

You’ll partner with customers to bring robotic systems online, drive continuous improvement, and directly impact Chef’s growth and product roadmap. As a member of our Applications team, you will learn a rare blend of technical, operational, and customer-facing expertise that few roles offer.

Success in this position opens the door to your career growth, whether toward technical leadership, product management, field engineering, or customer success sales leadership.

Please note that this is not a software applications engineering role. This is a customer-facing role where you’ll be deployed at our customers’ facilities at least 50% of the time.

Responsibilities:

• Partner with Sales and Product teams during early customer engagements to assess customer needs, identify opportunities, and evaluate technical feasibility.
• Work directly with customers’ engineering and operations teams to understand their processes, challenges and success metrics.
• Configure, test, and validate Chef’s robotic systems in the lab, working closely with R&D to adapt to each customer’s unique production environment.
• Lead and project manage deployments, coordinating across Chef’s engineering, manufacturing, and customer teams to ensure smooth installations.
• Lead on-site deployments, including installation, qualification testing, and production hardening
• Work hands-on with the systems to test new software, configurations and resolve break fix hardware repairs.
• Provide post-deployment support to ensure customer satisfaction and identify opportunities for product and feature expansion.
• Capture customer feedback and translate it into actionable insights for Chef’s product and engineering teams.
• Serve as the technical face of Chef Robotics representing our engineering rigor, problem-solving mindset and commitment to customer success.

Qualifications:

• You are energized by seeing technology make a tangible impact in the real world and enjoy the challenge of bringing complex systems to life in customer environments.
• You thrive in dynamic, fast-paced settings and can manage multiple deployments, customers and competing priorities with professionalism and clarity.
• You’re an excellent communicator who can translate between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• You’re self-driven and resourceful, with a bias for action and the ability to work autonomously in the field.

Requirements:

• BS or MS in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or a related field
• 2+ years of experience in applications engineering, deployment, solutions engineering, field robotics or a similar customer-facing technical role
• Prior experience in at least one of the following: robotics, motion planning, perception, controls or automation systems.
• Willingness to travel up to 75% across North America to support customer deployments and on-site work
• Familiarity with Linux/Unix, Robot Operating System (ROS), and scripting in Python.
• Strong organizational and interpersonal skills - comfortable collaborating across technical and operations teams both internally and with customers
• Able to work independently and with minimal supervision
• Must be available to work a flexible schedule to support customers, including some weekend, nights and on-call hours

Why You’ll Love Working Here

• Be part of a mission-driven team transforming one of the world’s largest industries.
• Work hands-on with cutting edge robotic systems solving real world problems.
• Collaborate with a world class, cross functional team of roboticists, engineers and operators.
• Build rare, multidisciplinary expertise at the intersection of robotics, operations and customer success.
• Benefit from professional growth with exposure to both leadership and technical career paths.

Chef Robotics is solving one of the hardest problems in AI: bringing intelligence into the physical world.

Our robots are already operating in production facilities every day, generating the real-world data that powers the next generation of embodied AI. If you want to build technology that leaves the lab, ships to customers, and transforms an industry, Chef is the place to do it.

130000 - 180000 USD a year

Chef is an early-stage startup where equity is a major part of the compensation package. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position. Within the range, individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

In addition to salary and early-stage equity, we offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, dental, and vision insurance, commuter benefits, flexible paid time off (PTO), catered lunch, and 401(k) matching.