- Robot type
- Agriculture
- Location
- PhiladelphiaPennsylvaniaUSA
- Job type
- Software
- Posted
- Aug 17, 2026
- Salary
- $160,000–$180,000 a year
Full-time
Director of Software Engineering (Robot Applications & Behavior)
Job description
To accomplish our mission, we need a world-class, diverse team where everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas. With this in mind, we strive to create a work environment where every employee can be themselves and express their perspective – this enables us to deliver the most creative and innovative solutions to problems our customers face.
Headquartered in Philadelphia with an office in central California, and backed by top Agtech and autonomy investors, including S2G, Catalyst, Translink, Cibus, FPrime, Toyota Ventures, FFVC, Xplorer, and Radicle, Burro was created to solve the labor shortages facing farmers using robotics.
Burros can be described as Disney's Wall-E for agriculture…
Job responsibilities
- Own the technical direction of the robot behavior stack, including state machines, mission sequencing, user interactions, fault handling, and recovery
- Manage, coach, and grow the engineers on the team through weekly 1:1s, clear expectations, and honest performance conversations
- Own backend communication between robot and cloud: telemetry, command and control, and behavior when connectivity drops
- Own the operator and customer-facing UI, working with Product and design on what the experience should be
- Own expressive robot behavior, including lights, sound, and motion cues that tell people nearby what the robot is about to do
- Stay hands-on: write and review code, run design reviews, and take direct ownership of components on the team’s critical path
- Hire for the team and hold the bar, from writing the role through closing candidates
- Partner with the DevOps and QA team on build, test, and release workflows that this team depends on
Job requirements
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
- 8+ years of professional experience building production software, with a track record of systems that other teams depended on
- 5+ years managing engineers directly, including hiring, coaching, and performance management
- Experience designing systems and interfaces that other teams build on top of
- Experience shipping software on robots, autonomous vehicles, drones, or comparable physical systems.
- Strong proficiency in C++ and Python
- Experience designing and debugging behavior systems under real-world conditions: partial observability, unreliable state, and failures that only reproduce on hardware
- Ability to clearly communicate complex advanced concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders