Robotics Systems Integration Engineer

Socket.dev; New York (NY); On-site; USD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Ultra is hiring a Robotics Systems Integration Engineer in NYC to own the day-to-day health and reliability of our industrial robot platform. You will investigate failures that span software, firmware, electrical hardware, and networking, building tools and instrumentation to diagnose and fix root causes.

You will work across Linux, sensors, and cabling, moving from observed symptoms to durable fixes while improving diagnostics for future issues.

Qualifications

• Degree or equivalent experience in electrical/computer engineering, robotics, or Mechatronics.
• Experience integrating and troubleshooting systems with software, embedded electronics, and hardware.

Responsibilities

• Own investigations of complex and intermittent robot failures across software, firmware, electrical hardware, networking, and electromechanical systems.
• Serve as escalation point for reliability issues during development, deployment and operation.
• Triage issues, assess severity, gather evidence, drive investigations from report to root cause and corrective action.
• Diagnose communications problems across interfaces like Ethernet, CAN, USB, serial, and I/O.
• Write scripts/tools to collect diagnostics, automate investigations, and reproduce failures.

Skills

Linux

Embedded systems

Networking

Debugging

Instrumentation

Education

B.S. in Electrical/Computer Engineering or related field

Tools

tcpdump

SocketCAN

Logic analyzers

Oscilloscopes

Job description

About Ultra

Ultra builds industrial AI robots that are working in the real world today. Our robots automate mission-critical warehouse labor end-to-end, starting with e-commerce order packaging. We deploy fast, learn from real production data, and iterate aggressively. We already have a quickly growing number of revenue-generating robots operating in U.S. warehouses, and are now scaling towards thousands of deployments over the next few years. Our mission is simple: build the world’s most useful and deployable robot.

WARNING: Robotics is not for the faint of heart. There are no silver bullets here. It is tiresome, unglamorous, and at times brutal work. The only way out is through, and the only way through is treacherous and unknown.Success will require teamwork - so we are building a world‑class team to tackle some of the most exciting problems out there. We hope you join us.

Overview

We’re seeking a Robotics Systems Integration Engineer to join our NYC‑based team and own the day-to-day technical health and reliability of our industrial robot platform.

This is a hands‑on, software- and electrical‑leaning role focused on the difficult problems that appear at the boundaries between subsystems. One week, you might investigate an intermittent communications failure between onboard devices; the next, you might diagnose an unexplained compute reset, trace a power or signal‑integrity issue, build a tool to collect better diagnostic data, or reproduce a field failure in our Brooklyn lab.

You’ll be one of the first people we turn to when a robot’s hardware is behaving in a way that is difficult to explain. You’ll work across Linux, networking, sensors, cabling, and application software to move from an observed symptom to a proven root cause and a durable fix. You’ll own technical investigations, improve the tools and instrumentation available to the broader team, and help make each generation of our robot platform easier to diagnose, support, and operate reliably.

We are an early‑stage company moving quickly in a rapidly growing space. We welcome people from any background as long as you’re excited to join our mission, make an immediate impact, and help create a future where automation is accessible to all.

Who You Are

• You’re a systems thinker who enjoys investigating failures that don’t fit neatly within one engineering discipline. An intermittent device disconnect, unexplained process crash, or robot that fails only under a particular sequence of events is a problem you want to understand—not simply work around.
• You have a strong foundation in software, electrical engineering, computer engineering, robotics, or embedded systems. You’re comfortable moving between a Linux terminal and an electronics bench, and you can use evidence from both to build a coherent explanation of what the system is doing.
• You debug methodically. You form hypotheses, identify what evidence would distinguish between them, add instrumentation, and design controlled experiments. You don’t stop at finding a way to make the problem disappear; you want to understand why it happened and how to prevent it from returning.
• You’re comfortable working with incomplete information. You can take a report such as "the robot occasionally loses communication" and turn it into a structured investigation with clear next steps, owners, and data requirements.
• You communicate clearly throughout an investigation. The people depending on you know what has been ruled out, what remains uncertain, what you need from them, and when they should expect the next decision.
• You thrive in a high‑trust, high‑autonomy environment. You can balance urgent debugging with longer‑term reliability improvements and take responsibility for getting both across the finish line.

What You’ll Do

• Own the investigation of complex and intermittent robot failures across software, firmware, electrical hardware, networking, and electromechanical systems.
• Serve as a technical escalation point for difficult reliability issues discovered during development, manufacturing, deployment, and day‑to‑day robot operation.
• Triage incoming issues, establish their severity and scope, determine what evidence is needed, and drive each investigation from initial report through root cause and corrective action.
• Diagnose communication problems involving interfaces such as Ethernet, CAN, USB, serial connections, and discrete I/O.
• Write scripts and lightweight software tools to collect diagnostic data, automate repetitive investigations, analyze logs, exercise hardware interfaces, and reproduce failure conditions.
• Add and improve logging, metrics, health checks, and other instrumentation so that future failures are easier to detect and understand.
• Develop bench setups, test harnesses, fault‑injection methods, and automated regression tests that recreate real robot conditions and validate proposed fixes.
• Support the bring‑up and integration of new hardware releases, identifying interface problems before they become recurring production or field issues.
• Identify recurring failure patterns across robots and use them to prioritize engineering improvements with the greatest reliability impact.
• Help establish lightweight but effective practices for issue triage, incident reviews, regression testing, diagnostic data collection, and tracking corrective actions to completion.

What You Bring

• A degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, robotics, mechatronics, or a related discipline—or equivalent experience demonstrated through systems you have built and debugged.
• Experience integrating, testing, or troubleshooting complex systems that combine software, embedded electronics, communications, sensors, actuators, and physical hardware.
• Strong working knowledge of Linux, including comfort with the command line, processes, services, system logs, device interfaces, and basic system administration.
• Experience writing reliable software or diagnostic tools by responsibly leveraging AI coding agents. You do not need to be a specialized application-software engineer, but you should be comfortable reading and understanding existing code and writing reliable tools of your own.
• A practical understanding of networking and digital communications, including concepts such as addressing, routing, latency, packet loss, bandwidth, timeouts, and protocol behavior.
• Comfort reading electrical schematics and wiring diagrams and reasoning about power, grounding, connectors, signal paths, and hardware interfaces.
• Hands‑on experience with diagnostic equipment such as multimeters, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, bench power supplies, and communications adapters.
• A systematic approach to debugging, with the ability to isolate variables, design useful experiments, and distinguish correlation from a demonstrated root cause.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, particularly when coordinating investigations across teams and explaining technical findings to people with different areas of expertise.

Bonus Skills

• Experience with industrial robots, warehouse automation, manufacturing equipment, or other production electromechanical systems.
• Deep familiarity with one or more robot communication interfaces, particularly Ethernet, CAN, and USB.
• Experience with tools such as tcpdump, SocketCAN, candump, logic analyzers, or protocol‑specific diagnostic equipment.
• Experience designing automated hardware‑in‑the‑loop tests, reliability test systems, or manufacturing test equipment.
• Familiarity with observability tools, time‑series data, automated log analysis, fleet‑health monitoring, or remote diagnostic systems.
• Experience investigating problems involving EMI, grounding, signal integrity, power transients, thermal behavior, connector reliability, or wiring faults.
• Familiarity with structured reliability and root‑cause methods such as fault‑tree analysis, FMEA, 8D, or failure reporting and corrective‑action systems.
• Experience supporting robots or other complex equipment operating in customer environments where failures must be diagnosed quickly, sometimes with incomplete data and limited physical access.
• A portfolio, project page, or collection of technical write‑ups showing systems you have built, integrated, instrumented, or debugged.

Expected Compensation

$110,000 - $150,000/annual salary + equity + benefits

This compensation range may be inclusive of several career levels at Ultra and will be narrowed during the interview process based on the candidate’s experience and qualifications. Adjustments outside of this range may be considered for candidates whose qualifications significantly differ from those outlined in the job description.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply.