Engineering Manager, Robotics, Fleet

Description

Close to 9 in 10 American factories and warehouses have no robot at all, and robots have not yet reached homes or businesses. The company is working to change that.

The company is a robotics research and deployment firm building general-purpose robot hardware and AI. Its semi-humanoid robot has dexterity close to a person's. Its box-moving robot handles boxes, pallets and bulk goods for customers from family-owned manufacturers to some of the largest brands in the world. Robots are built at volume and run as one network, pooling what the whole fleet learns to train better robot AI.

Founded at MIT and based in Watertown, MA, the team designs and builds its own hardware, trains its own models, works with customers of every size, and maintains the fleet across the US. The team has 160+ people, including researchers, engineers, technicians, operators and sellers.

Internally, every R&D role carries the title Member of Technical Staff (MoTS). In this role you would be a MoTS running fleet engineering. The external title is Robotics Engineering Manager, Fleet.

Responsibilities

• Lead the team that keeps robots running after they ship.
• Robots run production in customer facilities nationwide. The fleet is growing faster than the team that supports it, so the current way of running robots has to be replaced. This team builds that replacement, aiming for a small team that runs a very large fleet.
• Build the fleet software: dashboards showing what each robot is doing, remote diagnosis and repair from Watertown for robots in other states, detectors that flag problems in field data before customers notice, and instrumentation that sends field failures back to the robot designers. Current field operators are the first users.
• Manage field support, which works in shifts with on-call coverage. Shift leads report to you. The team writes code, works on hardware, and talks directly with customers.
• You report to the CTO.
• Typical problems: a failure that recurs every afternoon with no explanation in the logs; a packaging change that perception missed, even though fleet data showed it two days before the customer called; a remote fix that currently requires someone on site; a task that once needed a trained person and now runs in software; a hardware fault, proven by a pressure trace and a worn part, that needs a supplier, a procedure and a fleet-wide change.
• Build the fleet platform that shows what robots are doing, lets you act on it, and stores the data it produces.
• Build instrumentation: when the data to explain a failure does not exist, decide what to measure and get it onto the robots.
• Reduce how often a robot needs a person by measuring it and building what lowers it.
• Turn fleet findings into design changes, working with the product teams that own the robot.
• Hire and manage hardware and software engineers and the field support team, including shift leads and the on-call rotation.
• Be the engineer customers contact when something goes wrong, and explain what changed.

Requirements

• You have built robots that shipped and understand the full machine: mechanics, electronics, firmware and software.
• You have built tools or infrastructure for robots in the field and shipped updates to them while they were in use.
• You have debugged a failure that crossed between hardware and software.
• You have managed engineers as well as people who are not engineers.
• You are comfortable talking with a customer whose robot is down.
• When something breaks twice, you change what allowed it to break.
• Experience with remote operation, teleoperation, or human-in-the-loop systems for robots or vehicles.
• Experience with fleet software at a company running robots or vehicles in production.
• Experience running shift-based or on-call coverage for production systems.
• Experience leading a support or operations team and automating its work.

Conditions

The base salary range is $175,000 to $300,000, depending on experience.

Benefits will grow as the company does, and the company keeps investing in support for its team at work and beyond.

The company is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applicants from every background.

Benefits

• Health insurance fully covered by the employer, so there is no premium to pay.
• A managed 401(k) to help you save for the future.
• Unlimited PTO, plus every federal holiday off for full-time salaried staff. Hourly staff accrue 16+ days of paid leave and get 1.5x pay on federal holidays.
• In-office meals and team social events held throughout the year.