Principal Software Engineer, Manipulation

Job description

Job responsibilities

• Autonomously contribute to and advance the software architecture, technical strategy, and long-term roadmap for robotic manipulation capabilities on the Scoop program.
• Design, develop, deploy, and support advanced robotic manipulation software operating in production environments.
• Create high-performance software solutions for motion planning, robotic kinematics, control strategies, motion execution, multi-arm coordination, and environment representation.
• Set technical direction for manipulation systems and lead complex engineering efforts from requirements and design through implementation, validation, deployment, and operational support.
• Architect and evolve simulation environments, automated tests, and hardware-in-the-loop workflows to validate expected, safe, and robust manipulation performance.
• Lead the diagnosis and resolution of complex issues spanning manipulation software, robotic hardware, controls, sensors, distributed systems, and system behavior.
• Work closely with hardware engineers, controls and perception engineers, product managers, systems engineers, test engineers, and other software teams to integrate manipulation capabilities into broader robotic systems.
• Drive architecture discussions, design reviews, code reviews, technical planning, and major engineering decisions while documenting tradeoffs and ensuring durable outcomes.

Job requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Robotics, Computer Science, or a closely related field with 10+ years of professional software development experience in production environments; or a master’s degree with 8+ years of experience.
• Expert-level development skills in Python and strong programming experience in C++.
• Deep understanding of parallel and distributed systems and asynchronous or concurrent programming.
• Extensive experience designing and implementing production software and algorithms for motion planning, motion execution, multi-arm coordination, robotic kinematics, control strategies, and/or environment representation.
• Experience architecting and developing RESTful interfaces, gRPC services and clients, and other reliable communication interfaces for distributed robotic systems.
• Deep knowledge of system design principles, software architecture, and design patterns, with a record of evolving complex systems over time.
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction and deliver well-designed, well-implemented, and thoroughly tested solutions that meet demanding internal and customer requirements.
• Ability to lead ambiguous or ill-defined technical problems from initial investigation through architecture, planning, implementation, deployment, and operational support.