Vision / Robotics Engineer

The role

You'll build the perception and robotics that let our automated line handle wires, connectors, and terminals - parts that are flexible, small, and hard for traditional automation. That means vision systems that find and orient connectors and wire ends, and robot motion that picks, places, routes, and terminates reliably on a real production floor. You'll own problems end-to-end, from prototype on the bench to running in production, working shoulder-to-shoulder with mechanical, controls, and the technicians who run the line.

Problems you'll get to solve

A few of the problems you'd actually work on:

• Get a robot to reliably pick, orient, and place wires and connectors: flexible, shiny parts that have to be placed and seated to sub-millimeter precision, the kind of work traditional automation chokes on
• Build vision that finds and localizes a specific connector, terminal, or wire end in clutter, under real factory lighting, fast enough to keep cycle time low
• Solve high-precision insertion and termination: seating a terminal in the right cavity every time, at the tolerances harnesses demand
• Drive a vision-guided task from works-in-a-demo to runs-untended on the line, by understanding both the algorithm and how the part actually behaves
• Make it robust enough to run unattended on a production line, not just in a demo

What you'll do

• Build vision pipelines (classical CV and/or ML) for detecting, segmenting, and estimating the pose of connectors, terminals, and wire ends
• Develop and tune robot motion for pick/place, routing, insertion, and termination tasks
• Handle camera/robot calibration, hand-eye calibration, and the gritty real-world edge cases
• Close the loop with mechanical and controls engineers on end effectors, fixtures, and machine design
• Deploy, monitor, and harden systems running on the production floor; debug failures with real parts
• Measure and drive up cycle time, yield, and reliability

You are

• Hands-on with both code and hardware - happy at a workstation and on the floor with the machine
• Rigorous about making things work reliably in the real world, not just in a demo
• A fast iterator who learns from physical failure modes
• A strong collaborator across mechanical, controls, and production
• More interested in the line running reliably than in who gets credit for the fix

Minimum qualifications

• Experience building robotics and/or computer-vision systems that ran on real hardware
• Strong programming in Python and/or C++
• Solid grasp of camera calibration, coordinate frames/transforms, and robotic manipulation
• Comfortable working on-site in Austin, TX with physical equipment
• Legally authorized to work in the U.S. or Canada

Nice to have

• Industrial robot arms, motion control, or real-time systems
• 6-DoF pose estimation, deep learning for perception, or sensor fusion
• Manufacturing automation, machine building, or NPI on a production line
• Working with deformable/flexible objects (wires, cables, fabric)
• ROS or equivalent robotics frameworks
• Bonus: serious Factorio (or other factory-builder game) playtime. If optimizing automated factories for fun sounds like you, you'll fit right in.

What we care about

We care about engineers who close the loop on hard physical problems. The best person here gets a flaky vision-guided insertion from 80% to 99.9% because they understand both the algorithm and the way the part actually behaves on the floor. We want people who want to automate something the industry says can't be automated.

Compensation & benefits

• $135k-$185k base + meaningful early-stage equity, 0.25% to 0.75% (most offers 0.3-0.5%; 0.6-0.75% for an early senior or lead), 4-year vest, 1-year cliff. Typical hire $145-160k; $170-185k for a senior or lead
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Paid time off and company holidays
• Top-tier hardware, tools, and lab access
• Access to our engineering lab and tools for approved personal projects. We like people who build things

How to apply

Apply with your resume (and any projects/demos) and short answers to:

1. Describe a vision or robotics system you took from prototype to working reliably on real hardware. What broke, and how did you fix it?
2. What's your experience with manipulation, pose estimation, or robot motion?
3. Why Loombotic / why automating harness manufacturing?