Tech Lead, Real-Time Robotics Runtime & Middleware

Mind Robotics

Palo Alto (CA)

On-site

USD 180,000 - 260,000

Full time

7 days ago

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Job summary

Mind Robotics is building a runtime platform for real-time, physical AI on factory-floor robots. We seek a Tech Lead to own the robotics runtime/middleware, optimize latency, and guide model-serving paths for onboard AI.

You will design multi-sensor synchronization, QoS policies, and hardware-aware architectures in collaboration with research and modeling teams. You will directly influence decisions on middleware, compute hardware, and deployment strategies to ensure deterministic, reliable

Qualifications

Strong systems programming in Python and/or Rust.
Hands-on experience with robotics middleware — ROS2 (rclcpp/rclpy, DDS implementations like Fast DDS/CycloneDDS, or Zenoh), including designing custom message types, QoS tuning, and multi-node communication patterns.
Real-time systems experience: understanding of scheduling, latency budgets, jitter, and the difference between soft and hard real-time guarantees; comfort with RTOS concepts.
Experience with embedded/edge Linux — cross-compilation, device driver basics, and resource-constrained execution (CPU/memory/power budgets).
Multi-sensor synchronization: time sync protocols (PTP/gPTP), sensor fusion pipelines, and handling clock drift/skew across distributed compute on a single robot.
Model deployment/inference optimization: exporting and running models via ONNX Runtime, TensorRT, or similar; quantization and batching strategies for action-model inference on edge compute; understanding of how model latency translates into control-loop constraints.
Experience with control systems and motion primitives — enough to reason about how software architecture decisions (message latency, action chunking, control frequency) affect closed-loop robot behavior.
Track record of taking real-time systems from prototype to reliable, continuous operation on physical hardware.
Strong technical judgment on tradeoffs between research/experimentation velocity (fast iteration, permissive interfaces) and runtime reliability (determinism, fault tolerance, safety margins).
Comfort making build-vs-buy calls on middleware and compute hardware.
Clear communicator who can work directly with research/modeling partners to translate model requirements into runtime architecture, without a layer of translation in between.

Responsibilities

Design and build the robotics runtime/middleware layer – including topic/message architecture, QoS policies, and multi-process communication under tight latency budgets.
Own the inference-serving path for onboard models (VLA/action-expert policies): batching, quantization, hardware acceleration, and the tradeoffs between model accuracy and control-loop latency.
Architect multi-sensor synchronization and fusion arriving on different clocks and cadences, kept coherent enough for closed-loop control.
Make and own the hard technical calls on middleware choice, process/thread architecture, and how much real-time guarantee any given subsystem actually needs.
Set technical standards and do deep design/code review across runtime engineering.
Prototype and de-risk new architecture directions (new middleware, new compute hardware, new model-serving approaches) before they become team-wide commitments.
Work directly with modeling/research to understand what a policy actually needs from the runtime (latency, synchronization, action representation) and make sure the platform delivers it.