Senior Robot Software Engineer

Join Our Team

At Onward Robotics, we are a bold, gritty, and purposeful team with an ambitious mission to revolutionize fulfillment. Our team is driven by a client-first mentality: we aim to solve hard problems and fuel our clients’ growth with innovation. We are seeking talented individuals who will have a huge impact on both our business and our team. Join us on our mission as we move fast, think big, and have fun!

About Us

Onward Robotics delivers innovative automation technology that coordinates humans and robots as a cohesive system to revolutionize fulfillment. Our Meet Me solution combines proprietary software with person-to-goods mobile robots to increase efficiency in warehousing, distribution, and e-commerce operations. Onward Robotics provides the boost in productivity, flexibility, and speed that companies need to remain competitive and grow. Learn more at onwardrobotics.com.

About the Role

As a Senior Robot Software Engineer, you will focus on leading small teams in the design and implementation of software subsystems, testing, deployment, and life cycle support for our autonomous robotics product line, as well as, having the desire to mentor more junior team members. As a core team member, you will be working on a team of engineers and designers, acting as a technical, algorithm, or component lead, having the knowledge of software development and algorithm implementation.

Responsibilities

• Experience with requirements-driven object-oriented software design as well as implementation on real-world hardware and embedded systems.
• In many cases, the candidate will be responsible for integrating their software with electro-mechanical components (sensors, actuators, servos, and motors).
• Responsible for assigned tasks that will include both improving our existing software components and developing new ones.
• Feature and sub-system-level ownership from requirements generation through design, development, testing, and deployment.
• Adhere to software development best practices: peer reviews, testing, version control, bug tracking, and integrated documentation.

Core Competencies

• Ability to be flexible and adaptable in a startup environment.
• Good team player with great communication skills.

Typical Day

As a Senior Robot Software Engineer, no two days look exactly the same—but here’s what you can expect most days:

• Kick off with a daily stand-up, aligning with your team on priorities, blockers, and progress.
• Dive into designing and coding software subsystems, whether that’s refining motion planning algorithms, optimizing localization, or building new integrations with sensors and actuators.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teammates (mechanical, electrical, and design engineers) to test software on real robots, collecting data and quickly iterating on solutions.
• Take ownership of your assigned feature or subsystem—gathering requirements, reviewing designs, and pushing updates through development, testing, and deployment.
• Review code from peers, contribute to technical discussions, and champion best practices to ensure high-quality, maintainable software.
• Troubleshoot issues uncovered during robot testing, from hardware/software interfaces to real-time system performance, working hands-on with the hardware when needed.
• Mentor junior engineers, offering guidance on design choices, coding practices, and debugging approaches.
• Wrap up by documenting your work, updating the team, and planning next steps so your team stays aligned and projects keep momentum.

This role offers the opportunity to balance deep technical work with leadership, collaboration, and hands-on robot testing—making every day engaging and impactful.

Qualifications

• Required Skills
• Hands-on experience in one or more robotics fields such as autonomy, perception, mapping, localization, path planning and motion control.
• C/C++ programming experience.
• Experience with Unix/Linux.
• Experience with software configuration management systems (git, svn, etc.).
• Requirements-driven development.

• Minimum Experience Requirements
• 5+ years of experience working as a Software Engineer in robotics or equivalent.
• Demonstrated ability to perform requirements-driven software design.
• Experience with real-time systems, hardware interfaces, and distributed architectures (system of systems).
• Fluent in one or more object-oriented programming languages (C++, python etc.).

• Preferred Experience Requirements
• 2+ years of experience as a technical, component, or subsystem lead.
• Proficiency in C++ with extensive experience designing and optimizing complex software systems; familiarity with Python is a plus.
• CUDA programming experience.
• Familiarity with real-time systems and hardware integration.
• Experience working with autonomous robots.
• Experience with commercial software deployment and support.
• Algorithm lifecycle development from requirements through QA and field release

• Minimum Education Requirements
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or relevant degree and experience.
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• Preferred Education Requirements
• Master’s Degree or higher in relevant field of study.