Lead Robotics Platform Engineer

Foundry Robotics; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health/Dental/Vision

Generous PTO

Equity / Stock options

Job summary

Foundry Robotics in San Francisco is hiring the lead for our Cell Platform team. You will own the product between firmware and application software on the robot cell, setting the roadmap, overseeing releases, and collaborating with robotics, software, and manufacturing teams.

This player-coach role is hands-on from day one as you hire and build the engineers who will form the team, drive production-fleet reliability, OTA updates, and data transport choices. Competitive salary and equity offered.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of production-fleet ownership at AV, humanoid, AMR, or drone companies.
• Experience shipping platforms on fleets of robots deployed to real customers.
• Proven ability to survive OTA updates and debug remotely.
• Ability to own the layer between BSP and autonomy and coordinate across teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the Cell Platform product roadmap and releases.
• Hire and lead engineers to form the platform team.
• Collaborate with robotics, software, and manufacturing groups.
• Ensure reliability, OTA readiness, and data transport efficiency.

Skills

Embedded Linux/BSP depth

Sensor integration

Real-time and determinism

Middleware fluency (ROS 2 / DDS)

Data transport architecture

Hardware evaluation

Containerization / image engineering

Release engineering

Fleet / device management

Leadership / product ownership

Tools

NVIDIA Jetson

GMSL2 / PoE cameras

ROS 2 / DDS tooling

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

About Us

Foundry Robotics is building an AI-native robotics manufacturing company focused on deploying advanced assembly and production capability for leading robotics companies and national-security-critical hardware. Basically, we’re building robots that build robots.

Factory OS is building software that runs factories. Our platform spans cloud backends, on-prem services, and edge devices deployed on the factory floor. The operators, supervisors, and managers who use our tools need interfaces that are fast, reliable, and intuitive—even when network conditions aren’t perfect and the environment is demanding.

The Role

We are hiring the lead for our Cell Platform team. The cell platform is everything between firmware and application software on the robot cell, plus the electronic hardware it runs on: sensors and cameras, computes and carrier boards, networking, the OS and BSP layer, middleware and data transport, provisioning, and fleet infrastructure.

We treat the platform as an internal product. Its customers are our robotics, software, and manufacturing teams; its contract is a consistent, reproducible, performant base cell that they build on without worrying about the layers below. You will own that product: roadmap, releases, and the relationships with the teams that depend on it.

This is a player-coach role. You will be hands-on-keyboard from day one while defining the roadmap and hiring the engineers who will form the team around you.

What We're Looking For

You have built and shipped platforms on fleets of robots deployed into production for real customers. You know what lab prototypes and pilots don't teach: surviving OTA updates on remote hardware, debugging failures without physical access, and maintaining reliability against customer expectations rather than internal deadlines. Several years of this production-fleet ownership is our hard requirement; typically this looks like 8+ years of industry experience at AV, humanoid, AMR, or drone companies, owning the layer between BSP and autonomy.
Skills

• Embedded Linux/BSP depth: kernel, drivers, device trees, boot, and BSP management; platform bring-up on NVIDIA Jetson and x86 targets.

• Sensor integration and evaluation: has integrated a multitude of sensor types at the driver, SDK, and middleware-wrapper levels, and knows how to design and run sensor evaluations (latency, sync, driver stability, thermal). Emphasis on GMSL2 and PoE cameras.

• Real-time and determinism: configures and validates real-time Linux kernels, CPU isolation, IRQ affinity, and RT scheduling policies to guarantee loop jitter budgets for control at 500 Hz–1 kHz; understands the interaction between RT configuration, DDS middleware, and zero-copy transport paths.

• Middleware fluency: ROS 2 and DDS/RMW internals, QoS, node composition, zero-copy transport.

• Data transport architecture: reasons about functional and optimal data transport on single-compute and distributed-compute architectures from first principles (shared memory, zero-copy, DMA/NVMM paths, network protocols), independent of any one middleware, and evaluates alternatives against measured budgets.

• Hardware evaluation and qualification: has sourced, brought up, and qualified sensors/computes/networking on real robots; comfortable owning a BOM and working the seam with mechanical/electrical engineering.

• Containerization and image engineering: designs images deliberately (layer ordering for build cache, multi-stage builds, minimal runtime images) and orchestrates multi-container systems on robot computes.

• Release engineering: CI/CD pipelines, artifact/registry management, versioned release discipline.

• Fleet/device management: OTA, provisioning at fleet scale, device observability.

Growth Opportunities

• Own major product surfaces used by factory teams every day

• Gain deep exposure to edge computing and industrial software patterns

• Influence frontend architecture and developer experience across the platform

• Grow into technical leadership within the application team

Why Join Us?

This is one of the only places where world‑class manufacturing operators, mechanical engineers, robotics researchers, and software engineers sit in the same room — building production systems together.

We are committed to being deeply embedded in the U.S. industrial base. Our focus is simple: build adaptive robotic assembly systems that make American manufacturing scalable, resilient, and competitive again.

If you want to run a mature, well-defined commercial org, this may not be the role.

If you want to build the commercial engine that brings AI-driven manufacturing to every industrial and energy customer in America — this is it.

The base salary range for this full-time position in the location of San Francisco is:

$150,000—$250,000 USD

Compensation packages at Foundry Robotics for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position, determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Foundry Robotics employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, and generous PTO.