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Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

Standard Bots· Software
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San Francisco, CA$215k - $275kFull-timePosted 3w ago

About the role

Staff Software Engineer on site with a large robotics API customer, spending the first 9–12 months primarily at the customer facility in the San Francisco Bay Area, delivering production-grade fixes and shaping the platform for all developers.

Responsibilities

  • Define the Future: Own the technical vision for how advanced customers drive our robots programmatically: realtime streaming control, the Python SDK, ROS 2 integration, and safety limits for streamed motion across a fleet.
  • Decouple and Scale: Generalize what you learn on site into product capabilities with stable interfaces; bring fixes/features back to the product for all developers.
  • Standard Setter: Set reliability, safety, and observability standards for the external control surface; translate field failure modes into production-tested guarantees.
  • Represent the Customer Inside Engineering: act as the customer’s technical point of contact, translating observations into prioritized, testable requirements, and safeguarding safety/roadmap constraints.
  • Pragmatic Trade-Offs: decide between fast fixes and durable platform changes, documenting decisions for both sides.
  • Hands-on Delivery: ship fixes across TS/Node services, Python SDK, ROS 2 adapter, and robot controller from first reproduction to release-gated changes.
  • Systemic Reliability: root-cause real-time streaming faults, networking/environment issues, safety stops, and collision behavior; produce fixes, tests, and runbooks to prevent recurrence.
  • Technical Multiplier: pair with customer engineers to enhance their ability to operate independently; transfer learnings back to the team.
  • Influence & Accountability: run joint sessions with customer engineers and contribute to monthly roadmap reviews.

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of professional software engineering with ownership of end-to-end problems and cross-team leadership.
  • Experience with forward deployed, solutions, or customer-embedded engineering is a strong plus.
  • Experience with demanding technical customers and ability to decline requests when necessary.
  • Clear written communication for requirements, incident reports, and decisions understood by both customer ML engineers and leadership.
  • Fluency in Python and TypeScript/Node.js; familiarity with React, C++, Kubernetes; working knowledge of ROS 2 preferred.
  • Hands-on robotics/real-time control experience (ROS 2, streaming/trajectory APIs, 100 Hz+ motion control) and familiarity with safety stops and collision handling a plus.

Skills

Required:PythonTypeScript/Node.js
Nice to have:ROS 2Kubernetes

Benefits

  • Paid time off
  • Medical/dental/vision insurance
  • Life insurance
  • Disability insurance
  • 401(k)
  • Employee Stock Options
  • Daily catered lunch
  • Fully stocked kitchens with snacks and beverages
  • Regular team events
Last updated Sep 30, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Standard Bots

The all-in-one, most intuitive, most affordable industrial cobots.

Standard Bots is a company that designs and manufactures industrial collaborative robots (cobots), providing affordable, intuitive, AI-native robotic solutions for automation across various industries.

roboticsautomationAIindustrial cobots
Company profileWebsite

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