Robotics Software Engineer

Platform Software Engineer | Robotics | Austin TX | $110K - $160K | US CITIZEN OR GREEN CARD

A venture-backed robotics startup is hiring a Platform Software Engineer to work across the full software stack of their robot. This is a small, hands-on team where you'll own real parts of the product, from sensor integration and networking through to how operators actually use the platform in the field.

Recent graduates are very welcome. What matters is that you've already put software onto real robotic hardware, whether that was through a university robotics team, a research lab, an internship or a serious personal build. If you've debugged code on a physical robot and got it working, we want to hear from you.

What you'll be working on

• Designing and building features end to end, from teleoperation assists and fleet health monitoring to SLAM and navigation
• Optimising video streaming and communications for low-bandwidth environments
• Tuning software for the hardware it runs on, including compute, memory and data transfer
• Testing in both simulation and the lab, then taking it into field deployments
• Working closely with the electrical and mechanical engineers on integration and issue resolution
• Talking directly with users to shape what gets built and why

What you'll bring

• A degree in Computer Science, Electrical, Computational or another engineering discipline
• Hands-on experience developing software for robotic hardware (academic, internship or personal projects all count)
• Solid Python and/or C/C++
• Comfort working in Linux
• An understanding of communication protocols such as CAN, USB, I2C and Ethernet
• Confidence using lab instruments like oscilloscopes and logic analysers
• Some exposure to ROS 1/2 and open-source libraries for things like computer vision
• At least one project taken beyond the scripting stage into something that actually ran

Nice to have

ROS experience, CV or SLAM work, real-time software, Docker, CI/CD, networking or wireless comms, and a bit of frontend (HTML, CSS, JS) for building quick demo interfaces.

Who thrives here

People who don't wait to be told what's missing. You'll have real agency over your part of the product, and the team values engineers who speak up early, give honest feedback and are happy to be in the lab or out in the field when a milestone demands it. Expect some long days around critical deadlines.