Robotics Software Engineering Leader

Slip Robotics

$150K — $180K *
Technical Services
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years in robotics or embedded software with 5+ years in leadership roles.
  • Experience deploying autonomous mobile robots across multiple customer sites.
  • Proven ability to navigate site variability and integration differences in diverse environments.
  • Deep technical knowledge in motion planning, perception, and real-time systems.
  • Familiarity with safety standards relevant to mobile robotics (ISO 13849, ISO 3691-4).
  • Proven experience building and implementing engineering standards in a growing organization.

Responsibilities

  • Lead and mentor a growing robotics software team.
  • Oversee end-to-end software architecture and maintain high engineering standards.
  • Manage a predictable release process balancing speed and quality.
  • Ensure smoother and cheaper deployment across multiple sites.
  • Guarantee safety firmware meets required functional-safety expectations.
  • Steer the technical direction for a multi-generation fleet's navigation and perception.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align software and hardware roadmaps.

Benefits

  • Competitive salary and equity in an early-stage robotics company.
  • Comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits.
  • Permissive time off policy.
  • Small team environment with direct impact on product outcomes.
Full Job Description
As the Robotics Software leader, you own the entire robotics software function including the people, the architecture, and the delivery. Youll lead a growing team spanning autonomy and navigation, perception, firmware and motor controls, simulation, and safety-critical software. Youll set the technical direction and engineering standards, build and scale the team, and take operational ownership of the codebase and release process. The core challenge of this role is scale across sites, not scale at one: making a system that works beautifully at one facility work reliably at the fiftieth, without deployment effort growing linearly. This is a hands-on leadership role. Youll spend your time on architecture decisions, hiring, unblocking the team, designing and implementing workflows, and raising the quality bar. Responsibilities: 30 Team leadership & growth. Build, mentor, and scale a robotics software team across autonomy, perception, firmware/controls, simulation, and safety. Set clear module ownership, hire against the roadmap, and grow senior ICs and future managers. 30 Technical architecture & standards. Own the software architecture end to end including the repository, code ownership, review requirements, testing and verification strategy, and the standards that keep quality high as the team and codebase grow. 30 Delivery cadence. Run a predictable release process that balances fast iteration against qualified, field-ready releases, with the verification rigor a safety-relevant product demands. 30 Deployment scalability. Make site N+1 cheaper than site N: coordinate with field teams on commissioning playbooks, per-site configuration management, and navigation and perception robustness across varied facilities, driving down time-to-live for new deployments. 30 Safety-critical software. Ensure safety firmware meets functional-safety expectations for mobile robots operating around people (ISO 13849, ISO 3691-4). 30 Autonomy & perception. Guide the technical direction for navigation, motion planning, sensor fusion, and perception across a heterogeneous, multi-generation fleet. 30 Customer deployment support. Partner with deployment and hardware teams to get robots working in real customer facilities and to close the loop between field failures and engineering priorities. 30 Cross-functional partnership. Work closely with hardware, product, and program leadership to align the software roadmap with hardware timelines and customer commitments. Requirements 30 10+ years building robotics or embedded software, including 5+ years leading and scaling engineering teams. 30 Deployed the same autonomous mobile robot system across many distinct customer sites and environments and owned the hardening that follows: site variability, per-site configuration and commissioning, navigation and perception robustness across facilities, and integration differences from customer to customer. 30 Experience interfacing AMRs or other industrial robots with common middleware, traffic managers, and/or WMS. 30 Deep technical grounding in several of: motion planning and controls, perception and sensor fusion, localization, real-time and embedded systems, and robot middleware (ROS or equivalent). 30 Experience owning cloud fleet infrastructure including remote deployment, observability, and data pipelines for a distributed fleet. 30 Working knowledge of functional-safety standards for mobile robotics (ISO 13849, ISO 3691-4, ANSI R15.08) and how they shape software architecture. 30 A track record of building engineering standards in a growing organization. Preferred: 30 Domain experience in freight, logistics, material handling, or warehouse automation. 30 Experience with a Robotics-as-a-Service or hardware-plus-software product model. 30 Exposure to defense/government programs and their documentation and process requirements. 30 Fluency with modern AI-assisted / agentic development workflows and a point of view on how they change where engineering effort should go. 30 Experience with embedded Linux on edge compute (e.g., Jetson-class devices) and edge-to-cloud deployment. Benefits 30 Competitive salary and equity in an early-stage robotics company 30 Comprehensive benefits including health, dental, and vision 30 Permissive time off policy 30 A small team where your work has direct, visible impact on shipped products

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