Founding Robotics Engineer

About the Role

A pre-seed robotics startup is building a low-cost, teleoperated humanoid platform designed to bring human intelligence into the physical world — turning physical jobs into remote work. As the Founding Robotics Engineer, you will own end-to-end design and delivery of the robot, from hardware to software, enabling scalable remote-work-powered operations. This is a high-ownership, high-impact founding role with meaningful equity and a direct path to shaping manufacturing and deployment at scale.

What You'll Do

• Architect and build a low-cost teleoperated humanoid robot designed to replace or augment physical on-site roles.
• Build an initial wheel-based robot for patient check-in in urgent care clinics, including self-charging and safe navigation — all within a Bill of Materials (BOM) under $1,000.
• Solve the human-robot interaction challenge: craft an experience that achieves a patient preference win-rate of >50% vs. in-person staff.
• Deploy and maintain a fleet of 50 robots in clinic environments, targeting a Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of over 500 hours.
• Ship a contextual AI copilot that provides real-time guidance to operators, reducing new-hire training time from weeks to 24 hours — a stepping stone toward a future physical reasoning model.

What We're Looking For

Required

• 3+ years of engineering experience with hands-on, end-to-end ownership of projects.
• Mechatronics & Integration: Proven ability to build robots from scratch, integrating motors, sensors, actuators, and compute into cohesive systems.
• Embedded Software & AI: Reliable firmware development and deployment of ML on edge systems with real-time, low-latency constraints.
• Rapid Prototyping: Expert in CAD, 3D printing, and quick-turn fabrication — idea to physical prototype in days.
• Design for Manufacturing: Designs with cost, assembly time, tolerances, material selection, and scalable production in mind.
• Radical Ownership: You see a problem and start solving it — no permission needed. You own outcomes, not tasks.
• First-Principles Thinking: You question assumptions and invent novel solutions rather than defaulting to existing approaches.
• Strong CS fundamentals supporting both mechatronics and software/hardware integration.

Nice to Have

• Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Intuition: Instinct for what makes robots feel trustworthy vs. unsettling; practical understanding of the uncanny valley.
• Fleet Management: Experience deploying and maintaining robot fleets in clinical or field environments with defined uptime targets.
• Exposure to healthcare or clinical environments.
• Early-stage or founding-team experience at a startup.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: $120,000 – $140,000 USD annually
• ~1% equity
• Visa sponsorship available
• Approximately 60% hardware / 40% software split in day-to-day work

Location

On-site in New York, NY, USA. Candidates must be willing to work in-person.