Tech Lead — Robot Communication & Connectivity (human)

NEURA Robotics; Germany (OH); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

NEURA Robotics seeks a Staff Engineer to own the end-to-end robot communication stack, from real-time drive bus to fleet cloud connectivity and SDKs. You will write code, lead design reviews, and maintain hands-on expertise across the stack.

You will mentor engineers, drive RFCs, and define standards for DDS, ROS2 middleware, and industrial fieldbus integration. This role requires impactful cross-team leadership and deep knowledge of real-time systems.

Qualifications

• 8+ years hands-on engineering in embedded real-time systems.
• Experience designing APIs with cross-team impact.

Responsibilities

• Own architectural direction for the robot communication stack from hardware to fleet cloud.
• Lead design reviews, author RFCs, and mentor engineers toward Staff level.
• Define protocol boundaries and standards across DDS, ROS2, and fieldbus interfaces.
• Drive cross-team reviews and knowledge-sharing days.
• Produce design documents to reduce knowledge concentration.

Skills

Architectural leadership

gRPC/protobuf

ROS2 middleware

C++17/20 RT

RTOS concepts

Cross-team collaboration

Real-time systems

Software architecture

Latency analysis

Education

Bachelor's or higher in CS/EE

Tools

SOEM

EtherLab

FastDDS

ros2_control

Job description

Your mission & challenges

Every byte of data that moves between a NEURA robot's servo drives and the fleet cloud passes through layers of communication infrastructure. As Staff Engineer for our Robot Communication & Connectivity cluster, you own the technical architecture of that entire vertical — from the real-time drive bus at the hardware boundary, through robot abstraction middleware and industrial fieldbus protocols, all the way up to fleet cloud connectivity and the Neuraverse developer SDK.

This is a pure individual contributor role. You carry no people management responsibility. Your authority is technical: you set architectural direction, hold permanent veto on design decisions within your scope, and are the person the team calls when a communication boundary decision is genuinely non-trivial.

You will provide technical leadership to approximately 20 engineers across platform guild and product-anchor roles. You write code, lead design reviews, author technical RFCs, and maintain current hands‑on expertise across the communication stack. This is not an architecture‑only position.

• Own the architectural direction for the full robot communication stack: real‑time drive bus, robot middleware, gRPC control API design, industrial fieldbus protocols, fleet cloud connectivity, and the Neuraverse developer SDK
• Define and maintain the co‑review protocol at the boundary between RT OS scheduling and the EtherCAT master — any board support package change must pass a joint latency budget review before merge; you own this process alongside the Robot Systems cluster lead
• Own gRPC control API governance: proto contract standards, versioning policy, backward compatibility, and streaming RPC patterns that all robot platform integration engineers implement against
• Set DDS and ROS2 middleware standards across all platforms: QoS policy, shared‑memory transport, zero‑copy configuration, and domain isolation
• Own the protocol stack architectural direction for industrial fieldbus integration: PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, OPC UA, and safety bus implementations; define the boundary between the protocol stack and the industrial interface server layers
• Drive quarterly cross‑team state machine and API design reviews: any transition guard or gRPC API change that could be generalised must be design‑reviewed before platform‑specific implementation
• Lead quarterly cluster knowledge days: peer‑to‑peer problem exchange where every engineer brings one unsolved and one solved problem; output is a shared library ticket or design document, never slides
• Write design documents that reduce knowledge concentration; mentor Senior engineers toward Staff level; drive cluster hiring sourcing

What we can look forward to

• Real‑time communication and networking
  • Hands‑on EtherCAT master stack implementation and commissioning on production robot hardware — SOEM, EtherLab, or equivalent; configuration alone is not sufficient
  • IEEE 1588/PTP hardware clock synchronisation implementation experience on physical hardware
  • TSN stack configuration: 802.1Qbv/Qav/AS traffic shaping and deterministic Ethernet scheduling for real‑time environments
  • Deep DDS middleware expertise (FastDDS or equivalent): QoS design, shared‑memory transport, zero‑copy, domain isolation at production deployment level
• Robot middleware and API design
  • gRPC/protobuf API governance experience at the cross‑team level — you have designed APIs that multiple other teams depend on, including versioning and backward compatibility
  • ROS2 middleware stack proficiency: ros2_control, lifecycle nodes, diagnostics framework, launch architecture
  • Robot operational state machine design for safety‑critical systems: boot, homing, fault, emergency stop, and recovery cycle patterns
  • C++17/20 at RT loop constraints: lock‑free data structures, 1 kHz control loop discipline, latency profiling
• Staff‑level leadership (mandatory)
  • Demonstrated cross‑team architectural impact: your design decisions changed how multiple teams work, not just your own domain
  • RFC or design document leadership with cross‑team reach: you have resolved interface conflicts between teams and had your proposal adopted as the standard
  • Mentoring track record: at least one engineer you have materially accelerated toward a senior or staff‑equivalent level
  • 8+ years of hands‑on engineering experience spanning embedded real‑time systems and robot communication middleware
• Nice to have
  • Industrial fieldbus protocol stack implementation: PROFINET device stack, EtherNet/IP adapter, safety bus design (FSoE/PROFIsafe)
  • Fleet robotics platform engineering: OTA pipelines, VDA 5050 mission protocol, fleet telemetry at scale
  • Developer SDK design for external developers: typed node systems, skill marketplace toolchains, API versioning
  • Open‑source contributions to robotics communication infrastructure (FastDDS, ros2_control, SOEM, or equivalent)