Director of Robot Applications and Behavior
On-sitePhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Job Summary
Own the technical direction of the robot behavior stack, including state machines, mission sequencing, user interactions, fault handling, and recovery. Manage, coach, and grow the engineers on the team through weekly 1:1s, clear expectations, and honest performance conversations while hiring and holding the bar from writing roles to closing candidates. Own backend communication between robot and cloud, including telemetry, command and control, and behavior when connectivity drops. Own the operator and customer-facing UI, working with Product and design on the experience. Own expressive robot behavior, including lights, sound, and motion cues that tell people nearby what the robot is about to do. Stay hands-on by writing and reviewing code, running design reviews, and taking direct ownership of components on the team's critical path. Partner with DevOps and QA on build, test, and release workflows. Set and track the team's roadmap in partnership with Product, communicating progress and tradeoffs clearly. Requires 8+ years of professional experience building production software, 5+ years managing engineers, strong C++ and Python proficiency, and willingness to travel occasionally to Burro's test farm and customer sites.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
- 8+ years of professional experience building production software, with a track record of systems that other teams depended on
- 5+ years managing engineers directly, including hiring, coaching, and performance management
- Experience designing systems and interfaces that other teams build on top of
- Experience shipping software on robots, autonomous vehicles, drones, or comparable physical systems
- Strong proficiency in C++ and Python
- Experience designing and debugging behavior systems under real-world conditions: partial observability, unreliable state, and failures that only reproduce on hardware
- Ability to clearly communicate complex advanced concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Willingness to travel occasionally to Burro's test farm and customer sites to see the robots working in the field
Desired Qualifications
- Built or maintained a behavior framework, task planner, or mission executive running across a fleet
- Experience with the cloud side of a robot fleet: telemetry pipelines, remote operations, or OTA updates
- Proficiency with ROS
- Familiarity with web and mobile application stacks, since this team owns operator-facing UI
- Experience growing a team through a split, reorg, or fast headcount ramp
- Prior startup experience, especially in robotics
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