Staff Robot Platform Engineer

2 months ago

Houston, TX, USAStaff+

Responsibilities

Build and harden deterministic real-time control loops converting high-level commands into coordinated joint motion
Own the hardware abstraction layer, including cyclic data paths, synchronization, timing constraints, and fault recovery
Design and evolve the robot API/SDK with stable versioning and durable abstraction boundaries
Own the low-latency, deterministic messaging layer connecting on-robot processes
Build diagnostics and health-monitoring hooks for fault detection, state reporting, and safe degraded operation
Set technical direction for platform architecture, interface boundaries, backend abstractions, and design reviews
Mentor engineers across the platform team

8+ years of systems, embedded, or real-time software engineering experience, including meaningful experience in robotics, autonomous vehicles, or another hard real-time domain
Deep C++ fluency and ability to reason about real-time constraints, latency budgets, and determinism
Hands-on EtherCAT experience, including master implementation, PDO/SDO, and cyclic versus acyclic data, or equivalent fieldbus/deterministic networking experience
Experience designing hardware abstraction layers, backend-agnostic interfaces, and/or public-facing SDKs or APIs across hardware revisions or product generations
Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field
Rust, Zenoh, Jetson or embedded GPU platform experience, force estimation, and Pinocchio or similar dynamics library experience are bonus qualifications