Robotics Software Engineering Leader

Slip Robotics is at the forefront of robotic automation, delivering cutting-edge solutions that transform how businesses move goods. Our autonomous platforms redefine efficiency, reliability, and scalability in logistics. We’re a fast-growing team of innovators passionate about helping customers adopt automation seamlessly and successfully.

As the Robotics Software leader, you own the entire robotics software function including the people, the architecture, and the delivery. You’ll lead a growing team spanning autonomy and navigation, perception, firmware and motor controls, simulation, and safety-critical software. You’ll set the technical direction and engineering standards, build and scale the team, and take operational ownership of the codebase and release process. The core challenge of this role is scale across sites, not scale at one: making a system that works beautifully at one facility work reliably at the fiftieth, without deployment effort growing linearly. This is a hands-on leadership role. You’ll spend your time on architecture decisions, hiring, unblocking the team, designing and implementing workflows, and raising the quality bar.

Responsibilities:

• Team leadership & growth. Build, mentor, and scale a robotics software team across autonomy, perception, firmware/controls, simulation, and safety. Set clear module ownership, hire against the roadmap, and grow senior ICs and future managers.

• Technical architecture & standards. Own the software architecture end to end including the repository, code ownership, review requirements, testing and verification strategy, and the standards that keep quality high as the team and codebase grow.

• Delivery cadence. Run a predictable release process that balances fast iteration against qualified, field-ready releases, with the verification rigor a safety-relevant product demands.

• Deployment scalability. Make site N+1 cheaper than site N: coordinate with field teams on commissioning playbooks, per-site configuration management, and navigation and perception robustness across varied facilities, driving down time-to-live for new deployments.

• Safety-critical software. Ensure safety firmware meets functional-safety expectations for mobile robots operating around people (ISO 13849, ISO 3691-4).

• Autonomy & perception. Guide the technical direction for navigation, motion planning, sensor fusion, and perception across a heterogeneous, multi-generation fleet.

• Customer deployment support. Partner with deployment and hardware teams to get robots working in real customer facilities and to close the loop between field failures and engineering priorities.

• Cross-functional partnership. Work closely with hardware, product, and program leadership to align the software roadmap with hardware timelines and customer commitments.

• 10+ years building robotics or embedded software, including 5+ years leading and scaling engineering teams.

• Deployed the same autonomous mobile robot system across many distinct customer sites and environments and owned the hardening that follows: site variability, per-site configuration and commissioning, navigation and perception robustness across facilities, and integration differences from customer to customer.

• Experience interfacing AMRs or other industrial robots with common middleware, traffic managers, and/or WMS.

• Deep technical grounding in several of: motion planning and controls, perception and sensor fusion, localization, real-time and embedded systems, and robot middleware (ROS or equivalent).

• Experience owning cloud fleet infrastructure including remote deployment, observability, and data pipelines for a distributed fleet.

• Working knowledge of functional-safety standards for mobile robotics (ISO 13849, ISO 3691-4, ANSI R15.08) and how they shape software architecture.

• A track record of building engineering standards in a growing organization. Preferred:

• Domain experience in freight, logistics, material handling, or warehouse automation.

• Experience with a Robotics-as-a-Service or hardware-plus-software product model.

• Exposure to defense/government programs and their documentation and process requirements.

• Fluency with modern AI-assisted / agentic development workflows and a point of view on how they change where engineering effort should go.

• Experience with embedded Linux on edge compute (e.g., Jetson-class devices) and edge-to-cloud deployment.

• Competitive salary and equity in an early-stage robotics company

• Comprehensive benefits including health, dental, and vision

• Permissive time off policy

• A small team where your work has direct, visible impact on shipped products

Slip Robotics is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate candidates on the merits of their experience and their fit for the role. We welcome applicants from every background.