Founding Robotics & AI Software Engineer
Dream Robotics · Remote · San Jose
Job description
Founding Robotics Software and AI Engineer
Dream Robotics is building general-purpose robots that can perform useful work in businesses and homes. We are customer-centered, but we are also building core technology: multimodal sensing, scalable wearable data collection systems, robot learning infrastructure, and mobile robots designed for real deployment.
This role is for someone who is strongest in software and AI, but is comfortable working on real robots. You should be able to train models, debug pipelines, read logs, SSH into a robot, reason through a control failure, and physically help get the system running again when a policy drives the robot arm into the table.
You will build the software systems that make our robots useful in the real world. That includes training infrastructure, offline data processing pipelines, model design, model evaluation, feedback control, computer vision, firmware, robot runtime systems, and deployment infrastructure.
What you’ll work on
Model training for robot policies, perception models, and vision-language-action systems
Offline data processing pipelines for robot demonstrations, multimodal sensor data, video, tactile data, and robot logs
Model evaluation tools, benchmarks, failure analysis workflows, and regression testing
Robot control software, feedback control, motion execution, and safety-critical runtime systems
Computer vision, perception, SLAM, calibration, camera drivers, and sensor integration
Linux-based robot software, networking, device management, and field debugging
Fleet management, robot observability, remote diagnostics, OTA updates, and deployment tooling
Firmware and low-level interfaces across cameras, actuators, sensors, embedded controllers, and compute systems
Software infrastructure that supports real customer deployments, not just lab demos
You do not need to have done every item above before. We care most about strong software ability, robotics judgment, fast learning, and comfort owning messy real-world systems end to end.
What we’re looking for
Master’s degree or PhD in robotics, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, AI, or a closely related field
Strong software engineering skills, especially in systems that interact with real hardware
Experience building software for robotics, autonomous systems, embodied AI, drones, AVs, manipulation, mobile robots, or similar physical systems
Strong Python and C++/Rust skills
Comfort working in Linux environments
Experience with robot data, model training, perception, controls, simulation, or deployment infrastructure
Ability to debug across the stack: model behavior, logs, networking, sensors, drivers, control loops, and hardware interfaces
Good engineering judgment around reliability, safety, latency, observability, and field deployment
Willingness to work hands-on with robots, including setup, testing, debugging, and occasional mechanical fixes
Helpful experience
Vision-language-action models, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, diffusion policies, or robot foundation models
Large-scale model training, distributed training, data pipelines, dataset curation, or experiment tracking
SLAM, visual-inertial odometry, calibration, mapping, localization, or navigation
Camera drivers, sensor synchronization, embedded Linux, ROS 2, real-time systems, or firmware
Robot fleet management, OTA updates, remote monitoring, networking, or production deployment systems
Simulation, sim-to-real, synthetic data, or evaluation environments
Manipulation, mobile manipulation, humanoids, dexterous hands, tactile sensing, or multimodal sensing
Who you are
You are a software-first robotics engineer who wants to build systems that work outside the lab. You like models, but you also care about data quality, evaluation, deployment, reliability, and the unglamorous infrastructure that makes robots actually useful.
You move quickly, communicate clearly, and take ownership. You are comfortable with ambiguity, but you do not hide behind it. When a robot fails, you want to know why, fix the system, and make sure the same failure is caught automatically next time.
Why join
You will work on the full stack of embodied AI: data collection, model training, perception, control, deployment, and real customer use cases. You will help build robots designed to scale beyond demos into useful labor across businesses and homes.
Compensation
Base salary $150k-200k. Equity 1-2%
Pay: $150,000.00 - $200,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- Health insurance
- Paid parental leave
- Paid time off
- Stock options
Work Location: In person
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