Senior ML Infrastructure Engineer – Robotics Platform

Apptronik; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Apptronik in Austin, TX is building Apollo, a general-purpose humanoid robot, and the ML infrastructure that powers its data-to-model lifecycle. Scale is the name of the game: every robot and operator generates multi-terabyte data streams, and turning that data into shipped autonomy is the focus of this role.

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer, ML Infrastructure to own the self-serve platform and pipelines that move data from collection through training and evaluation to a qualified model

Qualifications

• Experience designing and shipping production ML platform services used by researchers and engineers.
• Deep hands-on experience with large-scale ML data pipelines handling multimodal data (video, telemetry, sensors).
• Experience building evaluation, simulation, or rollout harnesses for ML models.

Responsibilities

• Build ML platform APIs, workers, and control planes to move data and models from collection to qualified deployment.
• Develop data curation, annotation workflows, and versioning with traceability to raw data.
• Create scalable evaluation, simulation, and model promotion pipelines on GPUs and robot hardware.
• Improve developer experience with tooling for experiment tracking, training jobs, and reproducible environments.

Skills

Large-scale data pipelines

Annotation & labeling at scale

Evaluation & simulation harnesses

Python

Cloud infrastructure

Kubernetes

Docker

CI/CD

ML data tooling

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science / Machine Learning

Tools

Parquet

Arrow

S3/MinIO

lakeFS

DVC

Iceberg

Job description

Senior Software Engineer, ML Infrastructure

Austin, TX

Apptronik is a human-centered robotics company developing AI-powered robots to support humanity in every facet of life. Our flagship humanoid robot, Apollo, is built to collaborate thoughtfully with people, starting with critical industries such as manufacturing and logistics, with future applications in healthcare, the home, and beyond.

We operate at the cutting edge of Applied AI, applying our expertise across the full robotics stack to solve some of society's most important problems. You will join a team dedicated to bringing Apollo to market at scale, tackling the complex challenges like safety, commercialization, and mass production to change the world for the better.

JOB SUMMARY

Apptronik is building Apollo, a general-purpose humanoid robot, and the physical AI that drives it. Scale is the name of the game: every robot and teleoperator we field produces synchronized video, proprioceptive, tactile, and force-torque streams, and the fleet's output grows with every deployment. Turning that volume of data into shipped autonomy — routinely, at multi-terabyte scale — is what this role is about.

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer, ML Infrastructure to build that platform: the self-serve services and pipelines that carry data from collection through curation, training, and evaluation to a qualified model running on real hardware. Much of it is being created ground-up for the long term — humanoid robotics has few off-the-shelf answers — so the team builds first-party platform services alongside the open-source and commercial tooling we adopt where it genuinely fits.

This is a hands-on role on a small team whose platform is depended on daily by researchers and engineers across MLOps, Autonomy, Data Platform, and TeleOp.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

You will build the ML platform — the APIs, workers, and control planes that let researchers and robot teams move data and models through the system in a self-serve manner, with the testing and observability that being a dependency implies. The platform's responsibilities include:

• Data Curation & Annotation: Turn raw robot and simulation data into training-ready datasets — selection and filtering of manipulation episodes with synchronized sensor streams; annotation workflows that combine automatic labeling with human-in-the-loop review at throughput; and dataset versioning and lineage strong enough that any model traces back to the exact data that produced it.
• Data Pipelines at Scale: Make multi-terabyte dataset operations routine — transformation and assembly, coverage and quality statistics that tell us a training set is good before we spend a cluster-week on it, and read paths that keep GPUs fed.
• Simulation & Evaluation: Build the rollout harnesses that evaluate policies in simulation on our GPU cluster; the benchmarks and metrics captured consistently across simulation, real-robot, and teleoperation sources; and the qualification gates a model must pass before it reaches Apollo — automatic, not manual review.
• Model Promotion: Build the model store — versioning, metadata, attached evaluation results, lineage — and the promotion path from trained to qualified to deployed on robot, including packaging (ONNX, TensorRT) in partnership with Autonomy.
• Developer Experience: Provide the tooling researchers use daily — experiment tracking, training job submission, sweeps, and reproducible container environments. Reduce time from idea to running training job; win adoption by being the fastest path, not by mandate.

Alongside the technical work, you will partner with Autonomy, Data Platform, and TeleOp on dataset and model lifecycle contracts, contribute to the technical direction of these layers, and mentor the engineers around you through code and design review.

SKILLS AND REQUIREMENTS

No single person will have depth in everything below. We are looking for someone who has built platform services in production at scale with real depth in at least one of three areas — large-scale data pipelines, annotation and labeling, or evaluation and simulation — plus solid cloud and Python across the board:

• A builder at scale: a track record of designing and shipping production systems and services that other teams depend on daily.
• Deep hands-on experience with large-scale data pipelines for ML: multi-terabyte transformation and dataset assembly of multimodal sensor data — video and image streams, time-synchronized robot telemetry, the kind of data that trains vision-language-action and computer-vision models — with columnar and time-series formats (Parquet, Arrow), dataset versioning and lineage (lakeFS, DVC, Iceberg, or equivalent), and object storage (S3, MinIO).
• Experience with ML annotation and labeling at scale: automatic annotation of data combined with human-in-the-loop workflows — the tooling, quality control, and throughput management.
• Experience building large-scale evaluation or simulation harnesses: many parallel jobs on GPU infrastructure, aggregated into decision-grade results.
• Strong Python and general software engineering ability (testing, API design, code review), plus cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, Docker, and modern CI/CD.

EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience in ML platforms, data infrastructure, or related fields, OR 3+ years of direct, hands-on experience owning the data and evaluation infrastructure behind models shipped to production.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.

Bonus Qualifications:

• Robotics data formats and fleet-scale telemetry (MCAP, ROS, LeRobot, or equivalent).
• Simulation-in-the-loop evaluation with Isaac Sim, IsaacLab, MuJoCo, or equivalent.
• Reinforcement or imitation learning infrastructure for embodied agents (rollout workers, sim-eval harnesses).
• Deploying ML models to edge targets (ONNX Runtime, TensorRT, robot fleets).

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer
• Must be able to lift 15 pounds at times
• Vision to read printed materials and a computer screen
• Hearing and speech to communicate

*This is a direct hire. Please, no outside Agency solicitations.

Apptronik provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Create a Job Alert

Interested in building your career at Apptronik? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email.

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Enter manually

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

LinkedIn Profile

Are you legally authorized to work in the United States? * * Select...

Will you now or in the future require sponsorship for employment (e.g., H-1B visa status)? * Select...

1. Please confirm that you are either: (a) a U.S. citizen; (b) lawful permanent resident of the U.S. (green card holder); or (3) protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3). * Select...

Technology Control Restrictions: As a person in this position will have access to technical data and/or computer software maintained by the Company, which includes export-controlled technical data and/or computer software, successful applicants must be eligible under U.S. export control regulations to access such information.

a. If NO, please indicate your country of citizenship and, if different, the country in which you have most recently obtained citizenship or permanent residency status. This information will be used to determine whether it would be possible to obtain any required license from the U.S. government. (Enter in "N/A" if marked Yes above) *

2. Please indicate whether you ever been indicted for or convicted of violating any of the U.S. Criminal statues enumerated in 22 CFR 120.6 or violating a foreign criminal law on exportation of defense articles where conviction of such law carries a minimum term of imprisonment of greater than one year. * Select...

3. Please indicate whether you have been declared ineligible to contract with, or to receive a license or other approval to import defense articles or defense services from, or to receive an export license or other approval from, any agency of the U.S. Government. * Select...

This role is hybrid, requiring you to be on-site in Austin, TX up to 3 days per week. Are you able to meet this requirement? * Select...

Do you have 5+ years of professional software engineering experience in ML platforms or data infrastructure, OR 3+ years of hands-on experience directly owning the data/evaluation infrastructure behind models shipped to production? * Select...

Which of the following best describes your deepest hands-on experience? *

ML annotation & labeling at scale

Evaluation or simulation harnesses at scale

None of the above

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey.Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in aconfidential file.

As set forth in Apptronik’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.