Senior Systems & Robotics Engineer (Teleoperation)

Persona AI is developing and commercializing rugged, multi-purpose humanoid robots that perform real work. Persona's founding team has a decades-long history in humanoid robotics, bionics, and product development delivering robust hardware that has touched the stars, worked miles below the surface of the ocean, and even roamed Disney Parks. Our mission is focused squarely on shipping beautiful, reliable products at massive scale, while building a customer-focused team to achieve these aims.

Our Teleoperation Team bridges the gap between human intelligence and machine body - and the quality of that bridge is determined by data: how fast it moves, how reliably it arrives, and how accurately it represents what the robot is actually experiencing.

As our Real-Time Systems & Robotics Integration Engineer, you own the machine side. You'll build the data transport infrastructure, hardware integration layers, and fleet monitoring systems that make real-time human-robot operation possible over imperfect, real-world networks. Latency isn't just a number to you - you understand that every added millisecond costs operator trust.

What You'll Build
• Low-latency, fault-tolerant data streaming pipelines over unreliable real-world transports - WiFi, cellular, and everything messy in between
• Software that interfaces directly with hardware SDKs for robot sensing and control
• Real-time pipelines integrating motion capture and hardware prototypes for human demonstration and training data capture
• Monitoring, metrics, and alerting infrastructure that scales with a growing robot fleet
• Web APIs and backend services for data collection, remote operation, and operational analytics
• Embedded Linux software at the firmware boundary - going as deep into the stack as the latency problem requires

What We're Looking For
• 5+ years in software engineering with a strong focus on systems, embedded, or robotics work
• Strong Rust / C++ and solid Python for tooling, harnesses, and performance-critical systems code
• Deep Linux experience, including embedded and firmware-level environments
• Good networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, WiFi, cellular, BLE - and the debugging instincts to go with them
• Familiarity with robotic control concepts: kinematics, 3D geometry, sensor integration
• Solid open source chops: navigating complex dependencies, modifying codebases, contributing upstream
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
• Strong ownership and communication skills; comfortable working at the hardware/software boundary

Bonus Points
• Prior experience with Zenoh or comparable robotics middleware
• Experience building telemetry or observability systems for physical hardware fleets
• Familiarity with modern build systems like Nix or Bazel
• Prior open source contributions, especially in systems or robotics tooling
• Experience with motion capture systems or wearable sensor integration

Why This Role

The hardest part of human-robot teleoperation isn't the robot or the interface - it's the invisible infrastructure that connects them. You'll own that layer end-to-end, with full access to the hardware stack and a tight partnership with the rendering engineer on the other side of the seam. The problems here are novel, the constraints are real, and the impact is direct.

Why join Persona AI?

• You'll shape technology that's redefining the possibilities of robotics and human interaction.
• Work alongside passionate teammates who value diversity, creativity, and continuous learning.
• Enjoy full access to advanced prototyping tools, labs, and the freedom to experiment and innovate.
• We offer competitive compensation, excellent benefits, flexible work environment, and equity opportunities.

Persona AI embraces diversity and equal opportunity in a serious way. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We believe the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.