Forward Deployed Robotics Engineer

Medra; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401k

Medical insurance

Dental Insurance

Relocation benefits

Unlimited PTO

Weekday dinners

Job summary

Medra is developing a Physical AI Scientist platform that can operate scientific instruments with human‑level dexterity, analyze results, reason about next steps, and autonomously close the loop. We seek a role that acts as a technical co‑founder, delivering high‑impact customer projects and shaping the roadmap for solving our customers' critical scientific challenges.

The ideal candidate owns end‑to‑end delivery, translates workflows into technical requirements, and integrates robots,

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering fundamentals and experience shipping production code.
• Demonstrated systems thinking: designing, implementing, testing, or debugging interfaces in a production system.
• Experience delivering technical solutions with customers or users, from an ambiguous problem to a working solution in use.
• A penchant for customer-facing engineering: you enjoy working directly with users, making technical decisions and being accountable for the result.
• A track record of learning unfamiliar technologies quickly and making sound decisions with incomplete information.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain technical tradeoffs and surface problems early.

Responsibilities

• Operate like the technical co-founder of a small startup within Medra, owning end-to-end delivery of high-impact customer projects and defining the roadmap to meet customers’ most critical scientific challenges
• Translate scientific workflows into technical requirements, support system architecture from conception to delivery, and develop interfaces between robots, instruments, and software
• Design, build, and test scientific workflows on our Physical AI Scientist platform, combining existing capabilities with new production software and instrument integrations
• Make implementation tradeoffs with robotics and software engineers, deciding where to reuse existing capabilities and where a customer requirement needs new engineering
• Integrate, test, and debug software solutions in simulation and on physical robots
• Work with forward deployed scientists through integration testing, water runs, customer-site bring-up, and scientific validation, resolving engineering blockers along the way
• Diagnose failures across software, instrument behavior, robotics, and customer infrastructure, and work with specialist engineers to resolve them
• Extend deployed systems to support new instruments, consumables, and workflows, rolling out releases with appropriate verification and clear operating guidance
• Bring deployment learnings back into the platform by generalizing integrations and sharing reusable tests, diagnostics, and tooling with other deployment teams
• Clearly explain technical decisions, limitations, and risks to customers and teammates
• Travel to customer sites approximately 30% of the time for hands‑on deployment and support
• This position is 100% in‑person, you must be able to come on‑site to our San Francisco office. We do not offer hybrid roles at Medra. We do offer relocation benefits for applicants that need to relocate.

Skills

Software engineering fundamentals

Systems thinking

Customer-facing engineering

Clear written and verbal communication

Willingness to work with physicals

Job description

What We’re Building:

We have been quietly building the foundational layers of our Physical AI Scientist platform: Physical AI that can operate scientific instruments with human-level dexterity. Scientific AI that can analyze results, reason about next steps, and close the loop autonomously. This is an incredibly ambitious mission, but we believe that a team of ambitious people with high ownership can accomplish incredible things.

The Team:

• We’re a team of passionate, mission-driven engineers from companies like Tesla, Amazon, SpaceX, and Neuralink. We’re collaborative and love moving fast, both with our product and on team trips skiing or go-karting!
• As a team, we love nerding out about engineering and robotics — plus other topics like race cars or cooking. We like learning new things and then sharing our new knowledge with each other.
• Our team is opinionated and straightforward. We don’t mind intense discussions about design tradeoffs. If we have arguments or miscommunication, we resolve conflicts quickly and empathetically.

In this role, you will:

• Operate like the technical co-founder of a small startup within Medra, owning end-to-end delivery of high-impact customer projects and defining the roadmap to meet customers’ most critical scientific challenges
• Translate scientific workflows into technical requirements, support system architecture from conception to delivery, and develop interfaces between robots, instruments, and software
• Design, build, and test scientific workflows on our Physical AI Scientist platform, combining existing capabilities with new production software and instrument integrations
• Make implementation tradeoffs with robotics and software engineers, deciding where to reuse existing capabilities and where a customer requirement needs new engineering
• Integrate, test, and debug software solutions in simulation and on physical robots
• Work with forward deployed scientists through integration testing, water runs, customer-site bring-up, and scientific validation, resolving engineering blockers along the way
• Diagnose failures across software, instrument behavior, robotics, and customer infrastructure, and work with specialist engineers to resolve them
• Extend deployed systems to support new instruments, consumables, and workflows, rolling out releases with appropriate verification and clear operating guidance
• Bring deployment learnings back into the platform by generalizing integrations and sharing reusable tests, diagnostics, and tooling with other deployment teams
• Clearly explain technical decisions, limitations, and risks to customers and teammates
• Travel to customer sites approximately 30% of the time for hands‑on deployment and support
• This position is 100% in‑person, you must be able to come on‑site to our San Francisco office. We do not offer hybrid roles at Medra. We do offer relocation benefits for applicants that need to relocate.

Let’s talk if you have:

• Strong software engineering fundamentals and experience shipping production code
• Demonstrated systems thinking: designing, implementing, testing, or debugging interfaces in a production system
• Experience delivering technical solutions with customers or users, from an ambiguous problem to a working solution in use
• A penchant for customer‑facing engineering: you enjoy working directly with users, making technical decisions and being accountable for the result
• A track record of learning unfamiliar technologies quickly and making sound decisions with incomplete information
• Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain technical tradeoffs and surface problems early
• Interest in developing depth in robotics, automation, and physical AI, with a willingness to work directly with physical systems

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience shipping a product that combines software and hardware
• Forward deployed engineering experience, or another engineering role with direct responsibility for customer implementations
• Production code in Python, C++, or Rust
• Experience designing APIs, distributed systems, or software that coordinates external services and equipment
• Experience designing integration tests, reliability tests, observability, or deployment tooling
• Experience with robotics, laboratory automation, or biology

What we offer:

• 401k
• Medical insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Relocation benefits
• Unlimited PTOWeekday dinners

Medra is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies. We value diversity at Medra and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech.

Compensation Range:

$130K - $210K