Senior Software AI Engineer / Robotics / Brooklyn

Kelly Services; New York (NY); On-site; USD 165,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health insurance

Paid time off

401(k)

Job summary

Motion Recruitment Partners is hiring a Software Engineer to build the core software powering an AI platform and autonomous laboratory systems. The role spans backend services, data pipelines, workflow orchestration, and production infrastructure, with work that may control systems in the physical world.

You will collaborate across software, robotics, ML, and experimental automation, learn new technologies, take ownership, and ship reliable systems in a demanding environment.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering fundamentals and experience shipping production software end to end.
• Experience with modern backend development using Python, Go, Rust, or a similar language.
• Familiarity with concurrent and asynchronous programming, including event loops, cancellation, bounded queues, and task orchestration under failure conditions.
• Understanding of distributed systems challenges, including timeouts, retries, partial failures, and production debugging.
• Experience designing or operating fault-tolerant systems, with idempotency, dead-letter queues, and safe rollback.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and containerization.
• Strong engineering judgment, with emphasis on correctness, maintainability, and clear interfaces.
• High ownership and proactive approach to identifying problems, fixing, and quality.

Responsibilities

• Build agent capabilities and tools, including API integrations, code execution, literature retrieval, and workflow automation.
• Develop scientific workflow orchestration for processes like Bayesian optimization, experiment scheduling, and long-running jobs.
• Implement retries, idempotency, and safeguards for workflows that may fail.
• Build pipelines to ingest, store, and transform data used by models and language models.
• Create internal platforms, tooling, SDKs, shared services, and service templates.
• Develop observability and reliability systems with logs, metrics, tracing.

Skills

Python

Go

Rust

Async programming

Kubernetes

Distributed systems

Software design

Observability

Tools

Docker

Terraform

Job description

$165000 - $265000

Job Description

A technology company is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate scientific research and development. Its platform combines software, data, and experimental automation to help researchers explore and develop new materials more efficiently.

As a Software Engineer, you’ll build the core software that powers an AI platform and autonomous laboratory systems. This is a generalist role spanning backend services, agent tools, data pipelines, workflow orchestration, internal platforms, and production infrastructure. Your work may directly control and monitor systems operating in the physical world.

You’ll collaborate across software, robotics, machine learning, and experimental automation. You may not have experience with every technology in the role, but you’re excited to learn, take ownership, and build reliable systems in a technically demanding environment.

Required Skills & Experience

• Strong software engineering fundamentals and experience designing, building, and shipping production software end to end

• Experience with modern backend development using Python, Go, Rust, or a similar language

• Familiarity with concurrent and asynchronous programming, including event loops, cancellation, bounded queues, and task orchestration under failure conditions

• Understanding of distributed systems challenges, including timeouts, retries, partial failures, and production debugging

• Experience designing or operating fault-tolerant systems, with practices such as idempotency, dead-letter queues, and safe rollback

• Familiarity with Kubernetes and containerization

• Strong engineering judgment, with an emphasis on correctness, maintainability, and clear interfaces

• High ownership and a proactive approach to identifying problems, driving fixes, and improving quality

Desired Skills & Experience

• Experience with agentic systems or large language model workflows, including tool calling, context management, LangChain, or PydanticAI

• Infrastructure experience with Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform or CloudFormation, and cloud or on-premises deployments

• Experience with CI/CD systems such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or CircleCI, or with DevSecOps practices

• Familiarity with embedded protocols such as serial, I²C, or Modbus; device virtualization; or microcontroller firmware

• Experience with observability tools and practices, such as Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, or distributed tracing

• Contributions to systems for robotics, automation, or manufacturing infrastructure

• Frontend experience with Svelte, React, or similar frameworks, including responsive, real-time interfaces, state management, testing, usability, structured APIs, and browser performance

• Experience designing reproducible and testable systems for devices that can behave unpredictably

What You Will Be Doing

Daily Responsibilities

• Build agent capabilities and tools, including API integrations, code execution, scientific literature retrieval, and workflow automation

• Develop scientific workflow orchestration for processes such as Bayesian optimization, experiment scheduling, and long-running jobs

• Implement retries, idempotency, and other safeguards for workflows that may fail or be interrupted

• Build pipelines to ingest, store, and transform data used by models and language models

• Create internal developer platforms, tooling, SDKs, shared services, and service templates

• Develop observability and reliability systems using structured logs, metrics, tracing, and debugging workflows

• Support hybrid infrastructure across cloud and on-premises environments, including containerization, orchestration, and infrastructure as code

• Work with engineers across software, robotics, machine learning, and experimental automation to build and operate production systems

The Offer

• Competitive base salary, with compensation based on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience

• Equity and benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and their families, covered at 100%

• Mental health and wellness support

• Unlimited paid time off and 14 or more company holidays per year

• 401(k)

• Opportunity to work closely with a team advancing AI research

• The chance to contribute to scientific software and materials discovery

Applicants must be authorized to work in the US on a full-time basis now and in the future.

Motion Recruitment Partners (MRP) is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All applicants must be currently authorized to work on a full-time basis in the country for which they are applying, and no sponsorship is currently available. Employment is subject to the successful completion of a pre-employment screening. Accommodation will be provided in all parts of the hiring process as required under MRP’s Employment Accommodation policy. Applicants need to make their needs known in advance.