Robotics Hardware Ops Engineer — Real-World Lab

Niantic Spatial, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 142,000 - 193,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

401(k)

Job summary

Niantic Spatial, Inc. is seeking a Hardware Operations Engineer for our Real-World Test Lab in San Francisco. You will manage capture devices and robots, design test environments, and develop instrumentation to produce quantitative, reproducible data from physical runs.

You’ll own the hardware lifecycle, calibrate sensors, automate setups, and work with the AI Automation Engineer to feed results into unified evaluation systems. This role emphasizes safety and hands-on experimentation.

Qualifications

• Hands-on engineering experience with robotic hardware Bring-up, integration, teleoperation, troubleshooting, and maintenance.
• Built test rigs, fixtures, or instrumentation providing quantitative measurements.
• Designed and ran structured physical experiments with ground-truth methodology.
• Sensor calibration, multi-sensor synchronization, and error propagation knowledge.
• Strong Python and CLI skills with automation of hardware config, data offload, or test execution.
• Operationally managed hardware fleets: inventory, calibration schedules, logistics, and repair coordination.
• Experience ensuring safety around powered equipment or robots.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

• Own and characterize the fleet of capture devices, sensors, and robots end-to-end.
• Engineer the physical test environments: layout, lighting control, markers, and ground-truth references.
• Build the instrumentation that turns a physical run into quantitative data.
• Integrate physical runs into the evaluation system with automated data offload and run metadata.
• Execute robot runs and device-in-the-loop tests to yield repeatable results.
• Own the physical half of sim-to-real with controlled conditions and instrumented runs.
• Define and maintain safety procedures for robots and equipment.
• Automate repetitive tasks to enable others to run sessions independently.

Skills

Robotic hardware

Test rigs

Python

Telemetry/ground-truth

Calibration/alignment

Automation scripting

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Tools

ROS

NVIDIA Isaac

Job description

Niantic Spatial, Inc. is seeking a Hardware Operations Engineer for our Real-World Test Lab in San Francisco. You will manage capture devices and robots, design test environments, and develop instrumentation to produce quantitative, reproducible data from physical runs.

You’ll own the hardware lifecycle, calibrate sensors, automate setups, and work with the AI Automation Engineer to feed results into unified evaluation systems. This role emphasizes safety and hands-on experimentation.