Senior Software Engineer, Robotics Platform

In this role, you will:

• Debug and fix difficult low-level systems software problems, e.g. with drivers, networking, Linux configuration.
• Lead an upgrade of our autonomy software OS and middleware.
• Investigate load and networking issues and increase performance of our perception and robotics algorithms.
• Work with manufacturing to develop processes for provisioning robotic systems at scale.
• Help integrate new robot hardware, sensors, and cameras, and monitor performance.
• Contribute to overall software architecture design and standards and test and release processes.
• Champion engineering excellence, ensuring high-quality, well-structured, and well-tested code.

What You Bring:

• BS in computer science, robotics, or equivalent experience.
• Strong experience and expertise in Linux systems, with at least 4+ years experience building complex software in a Linux environment.
• Excellent software engineering fundamentals.
• Experience leading and shipping complex software projects.
• Understanding of network and time protocols, e.g. TCP, UDP, PTP.
• Knowledge of build systems and tooling, performance optimization, and memory and network profiling.

Nice to Have:

• Robotics experience.
• Experience with the robotics tech stack, e.g. Linux, ROS, OpenCV, CUDA.
• Experience with full-stack web engineering and infrastructure.
• Experience in systems engineering or product management.
• Experience with basic mechatronics and electronics.
• Experience leading projects or people in a tech lead or similar capacity.

Chef Robotics is accelerating the deployment of intelligent machines in the physical world, starting with food production—a sector facing the largest labor shortage in the U.S., with 1.14M unfilled jobs today and 3.1M projected by 2030. These roles cannot be offshored, making robotics essential to keeping production onshore and strengthening America’s manufacturing base. Backed by investors like Kleiner Perkins, Construct, Bloomberg Beta, and Promus Ventures, and supported by a world‑class team from companies such as Cruise, Zoox, Google, Tesla, and Amazon Robotics, Chef is rapidly scaling with multiple multi‑year contracts and a mission to put an intelligent robot in every commercial kitchen.

About the Role

Chef is looking for a Senior Software Engineer, Robotics Platform, to help us scale our fleet of robots. You will make a large impact on a small team, ensuring our robot compute, OS, middleware, and networking provide a stable and performant platform for our autonomy software and algorithms. You’ll be working on everything from low-level system software to high-bandwidth sensor data logging, debugging, and performance analysis. Ideal candidates will also be interested in overall product performance and will work closely with senior robotics and perception engineers to debug, test, and release new autonomy features.