Robotics Engineer - Autonomy & Hardware Integration

ABOUT THIS SEARCHScion Ventures is hiring on behalf of one of our portfolio companies, an early-stage robotics team building autonomous systems that operate in real commercial indoor environments. Not simulation, not a lab. There is hardware on the ground today.The company is not named publicly at this stage. We will tell you who it is on the first call.THE ROLEThey are hiring one engineer to own the seam between hardware and autonomy.Most robotics teams split these functions across two or three people. At this company's size, that split is the problem: mechanical issues get diagnosed as software bugs, calibration drift gets diagnosed as an algorithm failure, and days disappear into the gap. They want one person who can stand in front of the robot, tell which layer is actually broken, and fix it themselves.WHAT YOU WILL OWN- Sensor integration and mechanical rigidity. Mounting design that survives transport, vibration, and a moving platform. Mounting geometry computed against detection-range and field-of-view requirements rather than estimated.- Calibration. The extrinsic calibration procedure, the tooling, and the runbook, so recalibration is a routine operation instead of an outage.- Onboard autonomy stack. ROS 2 integration across navigation, localization, perception, and low-level control. Runtime and build reliability, including containerized environments.- Navigation behavior. Multi-goal execution, state management between goals, goal-pose orientation accuracy, obstacle handling, and coordination between navigation and other onboard subsystems.- Manipulation. Grasping and arm control on a mobile platform, including the base-positioning accuracy that grasping depends on.- Field operation. Be physically with the hardware. Run trials, capture data, diagnose on the spot, and turn field failures into fixes rather than tickets.- Power and thermal budget as a first-class constraint on what can be tested.WHAT THEY NEEDRequired:- 4 to 7 years building robots that operate outside a lab- Deep ROS 2: navigation, transforms and frames, cost maps, sensor drivers, launch and build systems. You can debug a broken transform tree without help- Hands-on mechanical competence: CAD, 3D printing, fastener and tolerance selection, vibration and rigidity. No ME degree required, but your brackets hold- LiDAR-inertial SLAM and localization in production. You understand the failure modes when point-cloud processing exceeds the real-time budget- Manipulation experience: grasp planning, arm kinematics, gripper control on real hardware- Comfortable being the only person in the building when something breaksStrong bonus:- Commercial mobile-manipulation or legged platform experience- Logistics, inventory, or facility robotics- Visual SLAM, or camera and range-sensor fusion for close-range perception- Multi-robot or heterogeneous fleet coordinationNot required:- A PhD- Simulation-only experienceFIRST 90 DAYS- Day 30: sensor mounting and calibration solved and documented. Localization holds through a full operational loop without operator intervention.- Day 60: multi-goal navigation runs end to end reliably, correct final orientation, onboard perception integrated with the rest of the system.- Day 90: the robot performs a full physical task on demand, in the real environment. You can say honestly what the platform will and will not do next.INTERVIEW PROCESS1. Screen, 30 min. Background, plus one question: tell us about a robot that failed in the field and what the root cause turned out to be.2. Technical deep dive, 60 min. We describe a real failure. You debug it out loud. We are watching whether you reason from the system or pattern-match from memory.3. Hardware judgment, 45 min. A real mounting and geometry problem. Bring the tradeoffs, not just the answer.4. On-site half day with the actual hardware. As much for you as for them.5. Two reference calls.No take-home. No algorithm puzzles.HONEST NOTES- Early-stage company. Some weeks are CAD and fasteners. Some weeks are C++.- You will not own the cloud or backend platform. You integrate with that boundary.- They work with an outside specialist on parts of the autonomy stack. Absorbing that knowledge into the team is part of your first quarter.

Location: On-site, Fremont, CA.

Full-time. Compensation: base plus meaningful early equity.Equal opportunity employer.