Senior Software Engineer - Robotics

Position Overview

Join Upstream Robotics' Software & DevOps team as you engage in the design, implementation, maintenance, and enhancement of our software platform components. Your role will involve supporting platform users, integrating new features, and developing proof-of-concept applications. You will work closely with fellow team members, as well as design and research engineers from Upstream and colleagues from Downstream. This position offers a unique opportunity to contribute significantly to the enhancement of our architecture, practices, and tools, with the aim of expediting research and development, bridging the gap to production, and reducing time-to-market.

Key Responsibilities:

• Participate in the conceptualization, exploration, and proof-of-concept execution of new features and product ideas
• Design, implement, test, maintain, and advance the functional components and tools of our software platform using modern C++ and Python
• Incorporate third-party components and develop new system functionalities
• Oversee the entire high-level software stack, which includes the operating system, device drivers, and user interfaces
• Engage in the design of a scalable and deployable distributed system software architecture
• Thoroughly document and communicate software requirements, designs, and implementations
• Guide and support junior team members in technical matters and team dynamics, fostering a positive and engaging team culture
• Promote a culture of software quality and collaboration, striving for it to become a standard within the group

Candidate Profile

Essential Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in engineering or equivalent professional experience
• Minimum of 3 years' experience working with robotic, actuated, real-time, or simulated physical systems
• Proficient in object-oriented and functional programming with modern C++
• Familiarity with scripting languages such as Python or Bash
• Solid knowledge and practical experience with Linux systems and toolchains
• Expertise in development best practices and tools, including version control, unit testing, and continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD)
• Strong analytical skills to decompose problems, assess development efforts, and prioritize tasks
• Commitment to maintaining engineering precision

Desirable Qualifications:

• Experience in making real robots or autonomous systems operate reliably in real-world scenarios
• Professional software development experience in a production setting
• Notable contributions to open-source projects
• Experience in inspecting, debugging, testing, and profiling complex software systems
• Familiarity with ROS 2, DDS-based middleware systems, and messaging frameworks
• Experience in parallel programming and performance optimization
• Experience with simulation environments such as Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, or Genesis, including large-scale simulation in the cloud
• Experience with ONNXRuntime, TensorRT, CVflow, RKNN, or deployment to NPU-based platforms
• Familiarity with the NVIDIA ecosystem (Jetson, NITROS, TAO, DeepStream)
• Experience in profiling and optimizing machine learning models for specific hardware
• Experience with Yocto/BitBake based build systems
• Experience with containerized development and deployment
• Experience with behavior planning and decision-making architectures
• Knowledge of robot perception, motion planning, control, reinforcement or imitation learning, or VLMs