Staff Robotics Engineer - Manipulation Architecture

Gram Games; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Equity

Relocation bonus

On-site in Palo Alto

Job summary

GRAM is seeking a staff-level robotics engineer to own the manipulation architecture for insectoid systems. You will lead cross-stack decisions, mentor engineers, and stay hands-on in C++ and Python on real hardware in Palo Alto.

The role requires deep experience across planning, sensing, control, and recovery, with a track record of deploying closed-loop manipulation on physical robots and delivering measurable results.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in robotics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated ownership of architecture and technical direction for a deployed manipulation system spanning planning, sensing, control, monitoring, and recovery.
• Strong C++ and Python skills, including experience with a robotics framework such as ROS 2, Drake, MoveIt, Pinocchio, or an equivalent internal stack.
• Built and deployed a closed-loop manipulation capability on a physical robot; you can explain its architecture and provide measured results from repeated trials.
• Led a failure-driven redesign that separated planning, perception, control, and hardware causes and produced a correction that survived repeated physical test.

Responsibilities

• Set the manipulation architecture and technical direction across task planning, sensing, learned-policy integration, contact reasoning, monitoring, recovery, and execution.
• Design manipulation behaviors for contact-rich tasks, including contact selection, constrained motion, force regulation, and recovery.
• Integrate and evaluate learned manipulation policies, including vision-language-action models and other embodied foundation models, through the full sensing, control, monitoring, and recovery stack.
• Implement production-quality planning and execution software in C++ and Python for real-time operation on insectoids.
• Lead cross-stack design reviews and resolve tradeoffs spanning sensing, control, actuation, operator interfaces, and mechanical constraints.
• Build task-level monitors that detect loss of contact, geometric mismatch, saturation, obstruction, and unsuccessful execution.
• Define hardware experiments, metrics, and regression tests for completion rate, cycle time, force accuracy, recovery rate, and failure mode.
• Analyze unsuccessful trials and convert the dominant causes into algorithm, sensing, controller, or mechanical changes that survive repeated physical test.

Skills

C++

Python

Robotics architecture ownership

Leadership

Sensing & control integration

Education

Bachelor's degree in robotics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, or related field

Tools

ROS 2

Drake

MoveIt

Pinocchio

Job description

GRAM is seeking a staff-level robotics engineer to own the manipulation architecture for insectoid systems. You will lead cross-stack decisions, mentor engineers, and stay hands-on in C++ and Python on real hardware in Palo Alto.

The role requires deep experience across planning, sensing, control, and recovery, with a track record of deploying closed-loop manipulation on physical robots and delivering measurable results.