Senior Software Engineer, Robotics Platform

Job Description

Job Description

Chef Robotics is accelerating the deployment of intelligent machines in the physical world, starting with food production — the sector facing the largest labor shortage in the U.S., with 1.14M unfilled jobs today and 3.1M projected by 2030. These roles can't be offshored, making robotics essential to keeping production onshore and strengthening America's manufacturing base.

Our AI-powered robots automate food prep and assembly in commercial kitchens and food manufacturing, and have already produced over 110 million meals in production — generating the world's largest proprietary dataset for deformable food manipulation. Backed by investors including Kleiner Perkins, Construct, Bloomberg Beta, and Promus Ventures, and built by a team from 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.

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 is an early-stage startup where equity is a major part of the compensation package. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position. Within the range, individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

 

In addition to salary and early-stage equity, we offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, dental, and vision insurance, commuter benefits, flexible paid time off (PTO), catered lunch, and 401(k) matching.

Chef Robotics is solving one of the hardest problems in AI and robotics — and we ship. Our robots are in production today, generating real data that trains the next generation of food AI. Backed by Kleiner Perkins, Construct, Bloomberg Beta, and Promus Ventures, and built by a team from Cruise, Zoox, Google, Tesla, and Amazon Robotics, we're scaling fast with multiple multi-year enterprise contracts. If you want to build physical AI with real-world deployments and real impact, Chef is the place.

 

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.