Software Engineer - Industrial Robotics Safety Systems

Software Engineer – Industrial Robotics Safety Systems

Posted on 09/14/2026

Location

University of Cincinnati 1819 Innovation Hub, Cincinnati, Ohio

Description

We are seeking a Software Engineer to join our team developing an advanced safety system for industrial robotics.

Our system uses sensors to monitor the area surrounding an industrial robot, detect people in proximity to the robot, and provide safety-related signals that can halt or restrict robot operation when a person enters a defined area.
This is a hands-on software engineering position combining software development with regular testing on real robotic hardware. The successful candidate will develop and maintain production-quality software, implement and test new system capabilities, diagnose issues across software and hardware, and participate in experiments and system validation.

The software stack is primarily Python, with C and C++ used where performance or lower-level implementation requires it. Development and version control are managed through Git and GitHub.
Because this role involves frequent integration and testing with physical robotic systems and sensors, candidates should be comfortable working in a laboratory and industrial robotics environment. This is not a fully remote position.

The ideal candidate enjoys building software that interacts with the physical world. They are comfortable moving between writing code at a workstation and testing that code on actual hardware.
Because this system is intended to contribute to the safety of people working around industrial robots, we particularly value careful engineering. Candidates should be interested in understanding not only whether software works under normal conditions, but also how it behaves under unusual conditions, hardware failures, timing issues, sensor errors, and other edge cases.

This position is well suited to someone who enjoys robotics, challenging technical problems, hands-on experimentation, and seeing software operate on real systems.

Work Location
The position is based at the University of Cincinnati 1819 Innovation Hub, 2900 Reading Road, Cincinnati, OH 45206.
Regular onsite work is required because development includes frequent testing and integration with robotic and sensing hardware. Work from home may be available on designated days when onsite hardware access is not required.

Major Duties & Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and maintain software for an industrial robotics safety system.
• Develop primarily in Python, with C and C++ used for performance-critical or low-level components as needed.
• Develop algorithms and software for processing data from sensors monitoring people and robotic equipment.
• Integrate software with sensors, computing hardware, robot controllers, and related system components.
• Regularly deploy and test software on physical robotic systems.
• Design and execute tests to evaluate system functionality, reliability, performance, and failure behavior.
• Diagnose and troubleshoot issues spanning software, sensors, networking, computing hardware, and robot interfaces.
• Identify edge cases and failure modes and develop appropriate tests and mitigations.
• Write clear, maintainable, documented, and testable code.
• Participate in code reviews and collaborative software development using Git and GitHub.
• Develop automated tests, test utilities, data collection tools, and analysis scripts.
• Document software architecture, interfaces, test procedures, and experimental results.
• Work closely with other engineers and researchers to translate system requirements into robust implementations.
• Follow established laboratory and robotic equipment safety procedures during testing.

  Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Robotics, or a related field.
• Experience contributing to a substantial software project or maintaining a multi-module production or research codebase.
• Experience with C and/or C++.
• Experience developing software for robotics, embedded systems, autonomous systems, computer vision, industrial automation, or other hardware-integrated systems.
• Experience with sensor processing, computer vision, 3D sensing, LiDAR, depth cameras, or related perception technologies.
• Experience with multithreaded, multiprocessing, asynchronous, or real-time/low-latency software.
• Experience profiling and optimizing performance-critical software.
• Experience with automated testing, continuous integration, and software quality practices.
• Experience with Linux development environments.
• Experience debugging systems involving a combination of software, networking, sensors, and physical hardware.
• Familiarity with industrial robotics or functional-safety concepts and standards is a plus.

Minimum Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or a closely related field, or equivalent demonstrated experience.
• Strong programming ability in Python.
• Understanding of fundamental computer science and software engineering concepts, including data structures, algorithms, software architecture, debugging, and testing.
• Experience using Git or another modern version-control system.
• Ability to independently diagnose and solve technical problems.
• Ability to write maintainable software that will be used and modified by other developers.
• Ability and willingness to regularly work onsite with robotic hardware at the University of Cincinnati 1819 Innovation Hub.