Robotics Research Engineer

About the role

ROBOTICS RESEARCH ENGINEER

About Us

We are reimagining manufacturing through advanced robotics. Our mission is to rebuild the American manufacturing industry as an AI-first, assembly-focused, dual-use contract manufacturer. We aim to empower manufacturers with intelligent, efficient, and adaptable robotic systems that redefine productivity and quality. As a founding member of our engineering team, you will have a direct and significant impact on our product, culture, and ultimate success. This role is 100% in-person at our office in Emeryville, CA.

The Role

We are hiring a Robotics Research Engineer to design, implement, and deploy intelligent robotic systems for manufacturing.

This is not a purely academic role — and not a generic software role. You will work across:

- ROS2-based system architecture

- Manipulation and navigation

- Perception and VLA-based control

- Traditional controls fused with learned methods

- On-site deployment in production manufacturing workcells

You should be equally comfortable reading robotics papers, tuning controllers, debugging sensor calibration, and pushing production code to robots running on a factory floor.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Robotics Systems & Architecture

- Design and implement distributed robotic systems in ROS2

- Build modular autonomy stacks for manipulation and mobile platforms

- Own system-level performance, latency, and reliability

Robotics Foundation Models (VLA)

- Develop and integrate Vision–Language–Action models for robotic control

- Design data collection pipelines and fine-tune foundation models for assembly tasks

- Benchmark and evaluate real-world performance

Controls + Learning

- Fuse traditional control with learned policies

- Implement hybrid perception–planning–control architectures

- Improve robustness, repeatability, and safety in physical systems

Manipulation, Navigation & Deployment

- Develop algorithms for dexterous manipulation and industrial navigation

- Ship systems from prototype to production

- Debug real-world edge cases (lighting, calibration drift, wear, latency) and maintain deployed robotic cells

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

Founder mentality: We love people who build like it’s their own company. You move fast, take ownership, and find a way through when the path isn’t obvious. You have the drive to make big things happen and the judgment to take smart risks along the way. If you prefer a clearly defined lane, a predictable pace, and all the answers before you start, there’s nothing wrong with that—but Foundry might not be the right fit.

Deployment Mentality

- Experience shipping systems into real environments (not just lab demos)