Chief Software Architect - Autonomous Robotics & AI

Planted; Oakland (CA); On-site; USD 275,000 - 325,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

11 paid company holidays and flexible,

Company-paid in-office lunches

Stock options

Medical, vision, dental, and other?

Pre-tax commuter benefits

401(k)

Climate impact role

Job summary

Planted in Oakland, CA is seeking a technical leader to build and scale its software organization across autonomous vehicle software, design/build/operate tooling, and AI agents. You will own architecture, roadmap, and a multi-disciplinary team delivering production systems at scale.

The role requires 10–15 years of software experience with 5+ years in leadership, a strong track record in robotics or hardtech, and a hands-on approach to end-to-end delivery.

Qualifications

• 10 to 15 years of software engineering experience, including 5 years leading engineering teams (senior ICs and managers) shipping production systems.
• Deep expertise in full stack software development involving hardware and software integration like robotics, IoT, or industrial automation.
• Track record shipping robotics, autonomous vehicles, or hardtech software into the field at scale—with a strong focus on fleet reliability, continuous testing, and real-time observability.
• Broad leadership capability across platform/full-stack teams, cloud infrastructure, data systems, or applied AI/ML groups outside your core specialty.
• Systems architecture judgment with strong understanding of how technologies work together (e.g., middleware, pub/sub architectures, web services, and ML pipelines). You do not need to write the C on the robot, but you must understand edge compute, latency, and hardware-in-the-loop testing.

Responsibilities

• Build, scale, and mentor a high-performing software organization across multiple domains.
• Own the software roadmap and ensure on-time delivery of complex, multi-system software projects.
• Lead development across our core platforms: Power Planter, Build View, and Operate View.
• Oversee the autonomous robotic vehicle software fleet, including fleet logic, behavior trees, and ROS2 stack.
• Own telemetry and data infrastructure that monitors production and turns installations into training data for better models.
• Build the team and roadmap for AI agents that automate design, estimation, and operations workflows.

Skills

Leadership

Software architecture

Robotics/Automation

Full-stack development

AI/ML integration

Tools

ROS2

CI/CD

Docker

Edge computing

Job description

Planted in Oakland, CA is seeking a technical leader to build and scale its software organization across autonomous vehicle software, design/build/operate tooling, and AI agents. You will own architecture, roadmap, and a multi-disciplinary team delivering production systems at scale.

The role requires 10–15 years of software experience with 5+ years in leadership, a strong track record in robotics or hardtech, and a hands-on approach to end-to-end delivery.