Staff Software Engineer

SR2 | Socially Responsible Recruitment | Certified B Corporation™; Menlo Park (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay plus early-stage stock

401k with generous company match

Company-sponsored health and dental

Unlimited vacation

Dinner covered when working late

Job summary

SR2 is a venture-backed robotics company in Menlo Park hiring a Robotics Software Engineer to join an early team building autonomous handling systems. You will work closely with software, electrical and mechanical engineers on a hands-on project with real-world impact.

You’ll design and implement Python and C++ ROS2 software for live robots, emphasizing maintainability, performance and safety-critical operation. Join a team where you own real surface area from day one.

Qualifications

• BS or higher in CS, Software Engineering, Robotics or closely related field.
• Strong Python and C++ with ROS2 experience.
• Demonstrated experience shipping production software on deployed robot systems.

Responsibilities

• Build software for an autonomous robotic package handling system with hardware and other engineers.
• Design, implement and debug motion control, perception pipelines and hardware interfaces.
• Write clean Python and C++ focused on maintainability and performance.
• Ensure software quality with testing, root-cause debugging and performance validation on live hardware.
• Develop safety-critical functions: fault detection, graceful degradation and fail-safe behaviors.
• Bring up software on physical hardware and address software-hardware boundary issues.
• Instrument systems with logging, metrics and alerting for fast diagnosis of production issues.
• Improve the stack, tooling and CI/CD to speed up the team.
• Incorporate cutting-edge robotics advances and AI-assisted development tools.

Skills

Python

C++

ROS2

Problem solving

Education

BS or higher in CS/SE/Robotics

Tools

Docker

Embedded Linux

CAN bus

Job description

Robotics Software Engineer (Python / C++ / ROS2) | Physical AI | [Menlo Park, onsite]

I'm hiring for a venture-backed robotics company automating physical work in a large legacy industry that has barely changed in decades.

They're building an autonomous robotic handling system that takes a slow, manual, physically punishing process and makes it automatic. Pilots are launching now, demand from major international customers is outpacing what the team can build, and they're more than doubling engineering as a result.

This is a genuinely early team. You'd be one of the first ten employees, working directly alongside a founding group with backgrounds across top robotics and aerospace companies, and owning real surface area from day one.

What you'll do

• Build software for an autonomous robotic package handling system alongside software, electrical and mechanical engineers
• Design, implement and debug across the full stack: motion control, perception pipelines and hardware interfaces for robotic manipulation
• Write clean, efficient Python and C++ with a real emphasis on maintainability and performance
• Own software quality through rigorous testing, root-cause debugging and performance validation on live hardware
• Write with safety-critical operation in mind: fault detection, graceful degradation and fail-safe behaviors for physical robots
• Bring up and validate software on physical hardware, including issues that straddle the software and hardware boundary
• Instrument systems with logging, metrics and alerting so production issues get diagnosed fast
• Drive improvements to the stack, tooling and CI/CD to speed the whole team up
• Bring cutting-edge robotics advances into the system where they'll make a difference
• Use AI-assisted development tools and coding agents to move faster

What you'll need

• BS or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Robotics or a closely related field
• Strong Python and C++
• Hands‑on ROS2 experience
• Demonstrated experience shipping production software on a deployed robot system
• Excellent problem solving, working independently and in fast-moving teams
• Genuine appetite for hard robotics problems and systems that work in the real world
• Comfort in an early‑stage environment: moving fast, wearing several hats, iterating on systems already in deployment

Nice to have

• Training, evaluating and integrating learned policies for vacuum‑based manipulators
• Perception and scene understanding for grasping in complex or dynamic environments
• Motion planning and low‑level motor control on BLDC or stepper hardware
• CAN bus in embedded or robotic systems
• Docker, containerization and embedded Linux in resource‑constrained deployments

Who does well here

• Biased toward action and comfortable taking initiative
• Gritty, learns fast, teaches those around them
• Calm when things get chaotic
• Low ego, gives and takes feedback well

On offer

• Competitive pay plus early‑stage equity, backed by investors with multiple successful robotics exits
• 401k with a generous company match
• Company‑sponsored health and dental
• Unlimited vacation
• Dinner covered when you're working late