Founding Software Engineer - Autonomy Systems

Starhold; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Sancho Robotics is seeking a Founding Software Engineer for Autonomy Systems in Palo Alto to build production-quality autonomy modules and enable our robots to understand their 3D environment. You will debug cross‑module failures using visualization, logs, and real robot data, and make system tradeoffs across accuracy, latency, compute, robustness, and real-time behavior.

You will test on real robots and sensors, contributing to a fast-moving robotics startup backed by a decade of deployment

Qualifications

• Strong C++ and Python skills for production-quality robotics software.
• Experience deploying and testing on physical robots and sensors.
• Solid robotics fundamentals in perception, planning, or manipulation.
• Ability to reason about tradeoffs across accuracy, latency, robustness, and compute.
• Familiarity with ROS2 or similar middleware.

Responsibilities

• Implement autonomy modules for coherent 3D environment understanding.
• Debug cross-module failures using visualization, logs, and real robot data.
• Make system tradeoffs across accuracy, latency, compute, robustness, and real-time behavior.
• Test on real robots using hardware experiments and field data.

Skills

C++

Python

Robotics software

ROS2

Real-world robot testing

Job description

Founding Software Engineer - Autonomy Systems

Full-time, on-site

Who are we

Sancho Robotics builds general-purpose mobile manipulators for advanced manufacturing. Our work was featured in the opening of the NVIDIA GTC 2026 keynote. Backed by $7 million in funding, our team has won multiple best-paper awards at top robotics conferences such as RSS and IROS and brings a decade of real-world robotics deployment experience.

What you will do

Implement autonomy modules: Implement reliable, production-quality components that give our robots a coherent understanding of their 3D environment.

Debug cross-module failures: Use diagnostic tools like visualization, logs, and real robot data to diagnose failures of a complex robotics system.

Manage system tradeoffs: Make practical engineering decisions across accuracy, latency, compute, robustness, and real-time robot behavior.

Test on real robots: Use hardware experiments and field data to evaluate performance, identify failure modes, and improve the autonomy reliability.

What you will bring

• Strong C++ and Python skills: you write robust, production-quality robotics software.
• You have deployed and tested on physical robots and sensors in the real world, not just simulation.
• Solid robotics fundamentals with hands‑on experience in perception, planning, or manipulation.
• You understand how autonomy modules interact in a real robot system and can reason about tradeoffs across accuracy, latency, robustness, and compute.
• Familiar with ROS2 or similar middleware.