Founding Real-Time Robotics Software Engineer

Gradient Robotics; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Gradient Robotics in San Francisco, CA is seeking a Founding Software Engineer to own end-to-end data flow from AI models to actuators and keep real-time pipelines running at single-digit latency. You’ll work near hardware, from kernel and firmware up through perception and controls, shaping a deterministic, low-latency stack for autonomous robots.

The role requires deep experience near hardware, real-time software, and ML-augmented perception, and offers the chance to shape the core software

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience building production systems close to hardware (drivers, kernels, embedded, robotics, or similar).
• Software: Rust, Python, C++, operating systems, and multithreading.
• Infrastructure: Bazel, Nix, HIL testing, and CI/CD.
• Firmware and platform: Linux kernel hacking and embedded systems.
• Debugged timing and concurrency issues in the wild.
• Owned messy, ambiguous problems and turned them into robust software.
• Able to work on-site in San Francisco 5 days/week (6 days/week if needed during crunch time), embedded in the team.

Responsibilities

• Ship performance-critical code to real robots daily
• Own the full data flow: camera frames in, perception and planning in the middle, control commands and actuator feedback out, and every system that carries them
• Own the real-time control loop: keep high-rate control running deterministically alongside vision inference, and make sure a slow frame never becomes a late motor command
• Build the perception data path: move high-bandwidth camera streams into the CV and ML models with minimal latency and zero silent drops
• Push down latency and tighten the stack to make the system faster, more deterministic, and more reliable
• Bring visibility into the pipeline: build the tooling and instrumentation that make real-time behavior across controls and vision observable and debuggable

Skills

Rust

Python

C++

Operating systems

Multithreading

Real-time systems

Tools

Bazel

Nix

CI/CD

ftrace

eBPF

Job description

Gradient Robotics in San Francisco, CA is seeking a Founding Software Engineer to own end-to-end data flow from AI models to actuators and keep real-time pipelines running at single-digit latency. You’ll work near hardware, from kernel and firmware up through perception and controls, shaping a deterministic, low-latency stack for autonomous robots.

The role requires deep experience near hardware, real-time software, and ML-augmented perception, and offers the chance to shape the core software