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Staff Autonomy Engineer

Chef Robotics· Engineering – Autonomy
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San Francisco$180k - $280kFull-timePosted 5mo ago

About the role

Staff Autonomy Engineer responsible for end-to-end architecture and hands-on development of Chef's autonomy stack, from perception to production deployment, with a focus on learning-based systems, robust manipulation, and scaling across a commercial fleet.

Responsibilities

  • Own the end-to-end architecture and hands-on development of Chef's autonomy stack — perception, action prediction, closed-loop control, and sensor fusion — from prototype through production deployment
  • Design and implement learning-based systems that predict and execute robot actions from visual and operational observations, generalizing across diverse ingredient types with minimal per-item tuning
  • Build closed-loop control systems that integrate vision, weight feedback, force-torque sensing, and trajectory planning for robust real-world manipulation
  • Develop rapid onboarding capabilities — algorithms and tooling that enable new meal types and ingredient configurations to be deployed quickly from minimal demonstrations
  • Instrument autonomy systems for production monitoring, failure detection, and continuous improvement; build data collection pipelines that feed back into model retraining
  • Define objective qualification criteria for autonomy subsystems; drive reliability and performance improvements using production data across the deployed fleet
  • Investigate and integrate the latest advances in robot learning, foundation models, and manipulation research — continuously evaluating what's ready to move from research into production
  • Mentor senior engineers, lead design reviews, and help build a team capable of scaling Chef's autonomy stack to hundreds of deployed systems

Qualifications

  • Demonstrated experience shipping a complete autonomy or manipulation system to real-world deployment — not just simulation or research prototypes
  • Deep technical expertise across at least two of: perception systems, visuomotor control, action prediction, sensor fusion, or motion planning
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals in Python and C++; experience building production-quality, maintainable systems across research and deployment codebases
  • Track record of technical leadership: driving architecture decisions, leading cross-functional projects, and raising the engineering bar on a team
  • Comfort with ambiguity and urgency — able to set direction and execute in a fast-moving startup environment

Skills

Required:Autonomy stack architecture and developmentPerception systemsVisuomotor controlSensor fusionMotion planningPythonC++

Benefits

  • medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • commuter benefits
  • flexible paid time off (PTO)
  • catered lunch
  • 401(k) matching
Last updated Jul 22, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Chef Robotics

AI-enabled robots for the food industry

Chef Robotics provides the industry’s first flexible labor equivalent, helping food manufacturers increase throughput, reduce food giveaway, and improve consistency.

AI-enabled robotsfood industryrobotics as a service
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