Member of Technical Staff, Robotics Systems Engineer

Industrial Next (YC W22); San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

IndustrialNext is building a scalable robotic stack for autonomous factories, seeking a Senior Robotics Systems Engineer to drive system architecture across mechanical, electrical, firmware, software, and sensors. You’ll own integration criteria, vendor selections, and customer deployment readiness.

We value 8+ years shipping hardware systems, proven end-to-end product execution, and fluency in Python, C++, and ROS.

Qualifications

• 8+ years shipping robotic or hardware systems to paying customers.
• Experience shipping end-to-end products from architecture to deployment.

Responsibilities

• Drive system architecture, requirements, and interface definitions across mechanical, electrical, firmware, software, and sensors as the product scales across embodiments and customers.
• Drive vendor selection and qualification for various components to integrate into the system, e.g. cameras, arms, end‑effectors, controllers, motors, and sensors.
• Define integration and acceptance criteria, and partner with deployment so customer programs harden the product rather than fork it.

Skills

Shipping robotic systems

Python

C++

ROS

System architecture

Vendor management

Customer engagement

Education

BS in ME/EE/Robotics

Job description

About IndustrialNext

We envision a world where no manual labor is required to build anything and everything we want.

A Safe world with abundant creativity.

We’re building a rapidly scalable, high-performing robotic system for fully autonomous factories. We deliver across multiple embodiments — bimanual / single-arm stations, wheeled humanoids, and mobile manipulators — on a shared stack. Every task we ship has to hit ≥99% success at human or industrial-automation cycle time.

Physical AI is moving fast. Academia and research-focused startups have shown promising early results, but very few have shipped robots that work at industrial precision, speed, and reliability. We have, and that gap is our work.

We invite highly talented AI and robotics engineers excited to join a hyper-scaling startup. You’ll work tirelessly to ship first products to early customers while building the foundation models and robots to reshape global manufacturing.

What we believe

1. Real-world deployment beats paper benchmarks. Our bar is what runs at customer cycle time with high success rate and dexterity. Every shift, for months and years.
2. Commercialized Data Flywheel is critical for Scalable Foundation Models. We’re not waiting until our foundation model is ready. We build and deploy working robots, while also building a data pipeline to feed into our foundation model.
3. Hardware iteration speed is a moat. Custom grippers, mobile platforms, and data rigs at production runs of dozens to hundreds. Moving fast from hardware design to deployment is what wins.

Role: Member of Technical Staff, Robotics Systems Engineer

Why this role matters

We’re building one robotic system — a shared stack that scales across embodiments and customers. Holding that product together as it scales is a multi-disciplinary problem: requirements, architecture, interfaces, vendor decisions, integration plan, and acceptance criteria all have to converge on time across mechanical, electrical, firmware, software, and sensors. We need someone who can drive the system’s technical architecture across all of that, hold the product picture across programs, and keep it coherent as we add embodiments and customers. Customer programs are the proving ground that hardens the product, not the source of one-off specs. As part of a small, fast-growing startup, you will be expected to also own the product up to deployment and serve the TPM role as well.

What you’ll do

• Drive system architecture, requirements, and interface definitions across mechanical, electrical, firmware, software, and sensors as the product scales across embodiments and customers.
• Drive vendor selection and qualification for various components to integrate into the system, e.g. cameras, arms, end‑effectors, controllers, motors, and sensors.
• Define integration and acceptance criteria, and partner with deployment so customer programs harden the product rather than fork it.

Required

• Education. BS in ME, EE, or Robotics; equivalent industry depth. Strong expertise in two of mechanical, electrical, or software to specify and review the others.
• Experience. 8+ years shipping robotic or hardware systems to paying customers. Has driven a product end-to-end — defined the architecture, qualified the vendors, drove integration, and shipped it through customer acceptance.
• Multi-discipline systems depth. Has authored real interface control documents and architecture specs across mechanical, electrical, firmware and software, not just reviewed them.
• Decides at 70% information. Can frame and resolve a real architecture decision under uncertainty and ship the answer in days. Makes and defends architectural calls before all the data is in. Does not require gated review boards to move.
• Vendor management. Has run RFQ to sample to qualification to second‑source for components that mattered; signed contracts, owned the relationship, caught real defects.
• V-model systems engineering, startup‑adapted. Has run requirements, design, integration and verification on real hardware without being slowed by gated review boards.
• Reads code. Python / C++ / ROS-level fluency. Can drill into perception, motion, or controls when subsystems disagree.
• Customer-facing technical relationship. Has run joint planning, milestone management, and escalation with customer engineering at the technical level.

Strongly preferred

• Robotics‑systems‑engineering experience at a humanoid or hardware‑shipping robotics company.
• Industrial robotics, factory automation, or manufacturing customer domain.
• Factory Acceptance Test / Site Acceptance Test design.
• Mobile manipulator, wheeled humanoid, or station‑based robotic system integration.
• Has sourced critical components under schedule pressure.
• Has run multi‑customer programs sharing one architecture and one stack.
• Industrial robot safety standards and functional‑safety / hazard‑analysis experience.

How we work

We are looking for hard, relentless engineers who treat shipping as the only metric.

• In‑person, on the hardware. SF, on‑site, full‑time. Relocation will be supported.
• Insane work ethic. Startups win by fast speed, focused and relentless pushes.
• High ownership, high equity. Small team, meaningful equity. Your contribution is significant.
• Demanding and fast‑paced. Tight timing constraints, customer commitments, little slack.

If you’ve thrived at SpaceX, Tesla, or other fast‑moving startups, you’ll recognize the energy. If "work‑life balance" is your top filter, we are not the right fit.

What we offer

• Competitive base salary + meaningful equity in an early‑stage, fast‑growing company.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Relocation support to SF Bay Area.
• A team you’ll learn from every day, working on problems that haven’t been solved yet.

Equal opportunity

We are an equal opportunity employer. We hire on merit and welcome candidates from any background.