Lead Robotics Engineer San Francisco Bay Area

TAR; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

TAR is building the world’s first off-grid power plant for data centers powered by renewable technologies, with robotics leading the way. The Lead Robotics Engineer will own the end-to-end architecture of TAR's robotic systems, spanning mechanical, electrical, controls, and software, while staying hands-on with hardware and software.

Based at our San Francisco robotics facility, this senior role requires owning projects from concept to deployment, mentoring engineers, and coordinating with

Qualifications

• 7+ years in robotics engineering across mechanical, electrical and/or software disciplines.
• Experience building or leading a robotics function from an early stage, establishing processes and standards.
• Deep hands-on technical expertise across the robotics stack to make and defend architecture decisions.
• Experience mentoring or informally leading other engineers, even without a formal management title.
• Comfortable operating with ownership and ambiguity, building playbooks as you go.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end architecture of TAR's robotic systems across mechanical, electrical, controls, and software integration.
• Design, build, and iterate on robotics hardware and software directly, while guiding the team.
• Establish engineering practices from day one, including design reviews, testing, validation and documentation standards.
• Identify and close gaps in the team's robotics capability across skills, tooling and processes.
• Mentor and grow the robotics engineering team, setting technical bar and culture for future hires.
• Partner with hardware, software and manufacturing leadership to align robotics decisions with broader product plans.
• Represent robotics engineering in cross-functional planning and translate trade-offs for the organization.

Skills

Robotics engineering

Technical leadership

Hands-on engineering

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Robotics hardware stack

Control systems

Job description

TAR’s mission is to power intelligence for the world. We are building the world’s first off-grid power plant for data centers powered by renewable technologies.

We firmly believe AI should be built in the US for the benefit of all people. For that, power must be fast, clean and scalable. We are singularly focused on delivering GW-scale power faster than anyone has ever done, by rethinking every layer of the stack.

We vertically integrate to solve every bottleneck, from racking systems to power electronics to dispatch algorithms to on-site construction.

Leave your mark on the future of civilization-scale energy infrastructure.

Company

TAR is both a hardware and software company, we are building out massive, critical, physical infrastructure. TAR is working directly with one of the largest compute providers to scale and deploy 5GWs by 2028.

• High ownership. High Agency. Own project end-to-end. Great people don’t need to be managed.
• Speed. We achieve great things on incredible timelines. We push ourselves to go faster.
• First principles. No ego. No hierarchy. Challenge every assumption.
• Passion. Solving the energy problem is one of the largest challenges that faces the world now and in the future.

About the role

TAR builds its own construction robots to install solar at gigawatt scale, where field labor and installation throughput, not equipment supply, become the binding constraint. The racking, the campus layout, and the robots that install it are designed together as one system, from GPS-guided foundation and pile-driving machines to autonomous earthworks. As Lead Robotics Engineer, you are the founding technical lead for this discipline, and you own the end-to-end architecture of TAR's robotic systems across mechanical, electrical, controls, and software. You take the function from an early-stage effort to a rigorous engineering practice, establishing the standards, design reviews, and processes the team scales on while staying hands-on with the hardware and software yourself. This is a senior player-coach role, based at our San Francisco robotics facility with regular travel to our West Texas site.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end architecture of TAR's robotic systems across mechanical, electrical, controls, and software integration, making and defending the decisions that determine how the machines get built.
• Design, build, and iterate on robotics hardware and software directly, staying in the work while setting the direction for how the team executes it.
• Establish the engineering practices the discipline runs on from day one, including design review, testing, and validation processes and the documentation standards the team scales on.
• Identify and close critical gaps in the team's robotics capability across technical skill, tooling, and process, bringing in the expertise needed to fill them.
• Mentor and grow the robotics engineering team as it is built out, setting the technical bar and engineering culture for every future hire.
• Partner with hardware, software, and manufacturing leadership to keep robotics decisions aligned with the broader product and deployment roadmap.
• Represent robotics engineering in cross-functional planning, translating technical trade-offs into terms the rest of the organization can act on.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in robotics engineering, spanning mechanical, electrical, and/or software and controls disciplines relevant to full robotic systems.
• Demonstrated experience building or leading a robotics engineering function from an early stage, establishing the processes and standards where none existed rather than operating inside a team someone else built.
• Deep hands-on technical expertise across the robotics stack, with the credibility to make and defend architecture decisions.
• Experience mentoring or informally leading other engineers, even without a formal management title.
• Comfortable operating with significant ownership and ambiguity, building the playbook as you go rather than following one that already exists.
• Strong communication skills, able to represent technical decisions to engineering leadership and cross-functional partners.

Nice to have

• Experience with robotics systems built for austere, field, or industrial and infrastructure environments, such as at Anduril, SpaceX, or Tesla.
• Prior experience as a first hire or founding engineer on a robotics team.
• Formal people-management experience, even though this seat is defined by technical leadership rather than direct reports on day one.
• Familiarity with TAR's broader technology domains, including energy infrastructure and autonomous systems.