Founding CTO Robotics & Autonomy for Industrial Retrofit

Vantora; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Vantora is hiring a founding Venture CTO (Robotics & Autonomy) to define, build and launch retrofit autonomy for heavy industrial equipment, in partnership with one of the world's largest heavy equipment OEMs. You’ll be one of the first two on the team, owning the technical direction from Day 1.

This founder-level role blends hands-on engineering with leadership and will scale to a core engineering team. Initially you will be hands-on on the machine and in the code, then hire and lead a team to

Qualifications

• 8+ years building robotics or autonomous systems; 3+ years leading engineering teams.
• Experience taking autonomy from prototype to field deployment on real machines.
• Deep expertise in at least one core area (perception, localization, motion planning or controls) and cross-stack fluency.
• Hands-on vehicle and machine integration (drive-by-wire, CAN/J1939, rugged sensing).
• Proven ability to hire strong engineers and manage technical budgets.
• Knowledge of functional safety for autonomous machines and safety-case development.
• Clear communication of trade-offs and risk to executives and partners.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical roadmap from prototype to field deployment.
• Define retrofit reference architecture across hardware, sensing and software.
• Hire and lead core engineering team for integration, autonomy and safety.
• Collaborate with OEM and partner teams to meet field readiness milestones.
• Set safety case and compliance path for ISO standards.

Job description

Vantora is hiring a founding Venture CTO (Robotics & Autonomy) to define, build and launch retrofit autonomy for heavy industrial equipment, in partnership with one of the world's largest heavy equipment OEMs. You’ll be one of the first two on the team, owning the technical direction from Day 1.

This founder-level role blends hands-on engineering with leadership and will scale to a core engineering team. Initially you will be hands-on on the machine and in the code, then hire and lead a team to