Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Robotic Applications
Builds the Python application-layer software — automation sequences, state machines, APIs, calibration and diagnostic tooling — that turns Atomic Machines' MEMS manufacturing nodes into reliable, repeatable robotic capacity, working closely with mechanical, electrical, and process engineers through hardware bring-up.
- Compensation
- $170K–$210K / yr
- Location
- Emeryville, or Santa Clara, California
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Staff
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 3+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 3+ years developing software for systems that interact with hardware or the physical world
- Depth on at least one system you built and can explain two layers down (design, failures, debugging)
- Strong programming fundamentals and fluent Python (daily writing and debugging)
- First-principles mindset: reason about why a design works
- Practical understanding of state machines, sequencing, and failure modes in software-driven physical hardware
- Systematic debugging habits and collaboration skills across the software/electrical/mechanical boundary
- BS in CS, EE, ME, Mechatronics, Robotics, or equivalent experience
Nice to have
- Experience bringing up and integrating electromechanical systems (sensors, actuators, motion axes) in production environments
- Working fluency in a systems language (C++, Rust, Go); motion stack is C++
- Robotics depth: kinematics, motion planning, vision-based alignment, calibration (hand-eye, kinematic, galvo scan-field)
- Experience with hardware-in-the-loop test design, observability, or simulation and digital-twin validation
- Realtime or embedded experience
Full description
Atomic Machines is building the Matter Compiler™, the first in a new class of AI-native, all-digital manufacturing systems that build working machines directly from code. The Matter Compiler (MC) is aimed at micro-machines: motors and gears the size of a grain of sand, robots small enough to work inside the body, cooling built directly into the chips that run AI, and the many devices like them that have been waiting on a way to build them. Its first product is PrimeSwitch™, an electromechanical power relay the size of a button battery that carries 150 amps continuous current and opens in 50 microseconds, about a thousand times faster than a conventional contactor. Founded by Jeff Holden — serial entrepreneur, ex-Amazon SVP and Uber’s first Chief Product Officer — the company has raised $250 million to date.
Atomic Machines is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices in Emeryville and Santa Clara.
About The Role:
Our manufacturing system is composed of nodes; each delivers a unit of manufacturing capacity for a process, and there are a dozen or more node types. As a Software Engineer, Robotic Applications, you will bring nodes to life: designing the automation sequences, state machines, and APIs that turn integrated hardware into reliable, repeatable manufacturing capacity. Your deliverable is software, mainly Python, in the application layers of our stack: the APIs that wrap a node to automate manufacturing processes, the orchestration that sequences motion, vision, and process steps for throughput, and the calibration and diagnostic tooling that lets us replicate nodes and keep them healthy.
You will work shoulder to shoulder with mechanical, electrical, and process engineers through bring-up: one week defining machine behavior with a mechanical designer, the next chasing cycle time out of a motion sequence or root-causing a failure that crosses the software/hardware boundary. You can try code on the machine in the morning and land it as a tested, typed package through CI in the afternoon.
What You’ll Do:
- Design and implement machine behavior: automation sequencing, state machines, failure detection and recovery, and the APIs that expose it all.
- Write code that makes unsafe commands impossible rather than merely discouraged: enforce invariants, validate before touching hardware, and leave the machine in a known state on every exit path.
- Ship a simulator or mock with every device, test sequencing, timing, and recovery without the machine, and extend the conformance suite every machine runs in CI.
- Optimize cycle time: instrument sequences, find where time goes, and overlap or restructure motion/vision/process steps to get it back.
- Bring up new hardware with cross-functional teams, and build the calibration, verification, and diagnostic tools that make the next copy of a machine faster to stand up.