Senior Software Engineer, Architecture

Navflex Inc; Broomfield (CO); On-site; USD 140,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Paid time off

Paid sick leave

Job summary

Navflex, a Colorado-based robotics and automation company, seeks a senior software engineer to own the application and integration layer for autonomous forklifts. You will translate a transport order from a customer's WMS or fleet manager into a safe, observable, repeatable sequence of robot behavior, and oversee the software that ships onto vehicles in the field.

You’ll optimize real‑time performance, integrate external interfaces (VDA5050/MQTT, LIF, geoJSON, WMS, EtherNet/IP), and mentor peers

Qualifications

• Production software experience in robotics or cyber-physical systems.
• Strong background in real-time software and Linux.
• Experience integrating with WMS/fleet managers and external interfaces.

Responsibilities

• Robot application architecture, including state machines and workflow orchestration.
• Real-time execution, CPU budgeting, and core pinning for deterministic behavior.
• Performance debugging with RT Linux tools and latency validation.
• External integrations with VDA5050/MQTT, LIF, geoJSON, and WMS flows.
• On-vehicle telemetry and versioned migrations for field upgrades.
• Mentorship and participation in testing strategy and code reviews.

Skills

Python

C++

Linux

ROS

RT Linux

Real-time systems

Distributed systems

Docker

Robotics

Education

Bachelor's/Master's/PhD in CS/Comp Eng/Robotics

Tools

VDA5050

MQTT

CANopen

LIF

geoJSON

WMS

EtherNet/IP

Job description

About Navflex

At Navflex, we're pioneering the future of logistics automation through cutting-edge AI and

About Navflex

At Navflex, we're pioneering the future of logistics automation through cutting-edge AI and robotics. Our autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are transforming the way goods are loaded and unloaded, enabling plug-and-play solutions that streamline operations and enhance efficiency across the global supply chain for some of the world’s most demanding warehouse Environments. Our international, cross-disciplinary team in the EU and USA pairs robust mechatronics with cutting-edge navigation and perception to deliver safe, reliable autonomy in real-world warehouses and yards. Join us in shaping the future of intelligent logistics.

The Role

You’ll own the application and integration layer of Navflex's autonomous forklifts - the software that turns a transport order from a customer's WMS or fleet manager into a safe, observable, repeatable sequence of robot behavior, plus the infrastructure that ships that software onto vehicles in the field. This is the direct counterpart to our Algorithms group: where they own perception, localization, and planning, you own the system those algorithms run within - task/order state machines, external interfaces (VDA5050/MQTT, LIF, geoJSON, WMS, EtherNet/IP, CAN), telemetry, and the real-time execution model that allocates our heterogeneous multi-core industrial PCs across critical control loops. You’ll be the real-time systems performance engineer specializing in software diagnostics, low-latency tuning, and advanced bottleneck analysis. You're part of the team responsible for the distance between “it worked on the test robot” and “it works on 70 robots across four sites” - and, when it doesn't work, for making sure we know why within minutes.

Success Measures

• Latency budgets are documented, measured, and met on real target hardware - control-loop timing is a number we can show a customer, not an anecdote, and it holds as the stack grows.
• Time-to-root-cause for field issues drops from days to minutes - on-vehicle telemetry and traces answer "why did this robot stop?" without a site visit or a reproduction attempt.
• Releases reach the fleet predictably - reproducible builds, safe rollout and rollback across sites
• New customer integrations land on schedule - bringing up an unfamiliar WMS or fleet manager becomes a known-effort task rather than a research project
• The architecture absorbs growth - new behaviors and new sites ship without cross-cutting rework, and component boundaries hold as the fleet scales.

What You’ll Do

• Robot application architecture - task/order state machines, workflow orchestration over the navigation stack, exception and recovery handling, and boundaries that keep algorithms, hardware I/O, and business logic independently testable and replayable.
• Real-time execution & compute budget - CPU pool design, core pinning and isolation, scheduling policy, and the single-source-of-truth allocation strategy that applies to launch files and containers.
• Performance debugging - root-cause jitter, missed deadlines, and contention across the stack (CPU/cache/interrupt pressure, middleware overhead) using our RT Linux tooling (cyclictest, Perfetto, per-node profiling, and similar).
• External integrations - build and harden VDA5050/MQTT, LIF, geoJSON, WMS flows, and industrial I/O (EtherNet/IP, CANopen), resilient to unreliable networks and non-conforming counterparties.
• On-vehicle data & telemetry - persistence layer for order history, metrics, and debug traces, with versioned migrations that survive field upgrades and never compete with control for cycles.
• Standards & mentorship - participate in testing strategy design (unit, simulation, replay-based regression), and code review.

What You’ll Bring

• Experience contributing to and maintaining production system architecture - including incremental restructuring of a codebase that can't be stopped for a rewrite.
• Mentors junior engineers and contributes to a strong engineering culture.
• High technical horsepower, low ego - intellectually curious, candid, collaborative, and more interested in getting to the right answer than being right.
• Thrives in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment - communicates complex technical ideas clearly and works effectively across teams and disciplines.
• Hands-on real-time/near-real-time Linux experience: scheduling policies, CPU affinity and core pinning, cgroups/process isolation, and measured latency validation on real target hardware (PREEMPT_RT familiarity a strong plus).
• Working knowledge of multi-core/heterogeneous hardware behavior (cache effects, hyperthreading, NUMA) and its consequences for software design.
• Production ROS experience in real deployments, not solely research or simulation - nodes, topics/actions, TF, QoS/DDS.
• Strong Python and C++ in a production robotics context, plus solid Linux systems/Bash skills.
• Containerized deployment and release management for fielded hardware, with strong documentation, Git, and testing discipline.
• Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in CS, Computer Engineering, Robotics, EE, or equivalent demonstrated experience.
• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 3+ years on robotics, autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, or comparable cyber-physical systems.

Preferred

• Customer-facing VDA5050 or AMR fleet management deployment experience.
• Warehouse, intralogistics, or industrial automation background, including PLCs and safety systems.
• Experience with industrial/fleet integration protocols (VDA5050/MQTT, fleet managers like LIF, geoJSON, WMS, or fieldbus/PLC I/O).
• Functional safety familiarity (ISO 3691-4, IEC 61508 / ISO 13849 concepts).
• Fleet data capture and egress: triggered recording, ETL under intermittent connectivity, edge compression / downsampling and retention policies
• Data contracts between fielded software and ML workflows: schema versioning across software revisions, fleet metadata, data lineage from capture time to training sets, shadow-mode evaluation on production hardware
• ROS 1 → ROS 2 migration experience at system scale, including executor/QoS tuning for determinism.

Compensation And Benefits

The base salary range for this role is $140,000 - $170,000, depending on experience, technical background, and demonstrated qualifications relevant to this position. This range reflects the expected base compensation for this role in Colorado; final offers are determined based on the selected candidate's specific experience and skills.

In addition to base salary, this role is eligible for:

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Paid time off
• Paid sick leave in accordance with applicable law

Application Deadline:

This posting will remain open until filled.

Navflex is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law.