Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Robotic Manufacturing Systems
Senior/staff engineer who designs and builds the distributed manufacturing software coordinating Atomic Machines' robotics fleet and Matter Compiler fab — writing real-time control code for sensors/actuators, driving architecture decisions (cloud vs on-prem), and instituting testing, CI/CD, and observability discipline. Stack centers on Python plus a systems language (C++/Rust/Go).
- Compensation
- $180K–$230K / yr
- Location
- Emeryville, California or Santa Clara, California
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Staff
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 8+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 5+ years building or debugging systems with real external dependencies: hardware, embedded devices, networked services, or similar
- Track record of making and defending nontrivial architecture decisions (build vs. buy, deployment topology, service boundaries)
- Strong Python skills for production systems, plus proficiency in at least one systems or strongly-typed language (C++, Rust, or Go)
- Solid grounding in distributed systems fundamentals: state coordination, consistency, failure modes, concurrency
- Experience introducing or maintaining CI/CD, automated testing, or observability tooling in a codebase that didn't already have it
- Comfort operating against an incomplete or contested spec, with a bias toward driving clarity
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or related field, or equivalent experience
Nice to have
- Experience with real-time or resource-constrained environments or analogous domains (IoT, edge compute, industrial systems, robotics, warehouses, manufacturing lines, fabrication and automation facili
- Experience instrumenting systems to make data usable by ML/AI pipelines and making failure legible
- Experience introducing testing or CI discipline to a team without it, including getting buy-in
- Experience evaluating cloud vs. on-prem/edge deployment tradeoffs for latency- or safety-sensitive systems
- Experience debugging issues spanning multiple system layers: application logic, transport, firmware, hardware
- Interest in translating physical constraints (latency, noise, mechanical tolerance, safety margins) into software behavior
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.
Why This Role Matters
FABOS is the Matter Compiler’s control plane. It maintains a trustworthy view of materials and equipment, plans production, and coordinates execution across the fab. It connects planned work to physical results so people and autonomous systems can understand what happened, what remains uncertain, and what can happen next.
You’ll build the dependable execution software that makes this general-purpose platform work as its capabilities and combinations grow. Our team already has deep expertise in data engineering and algorithms. We need a hands-on software engineer with deep architectural experience and systems thinking to turn that expertise into simple, dependable software.
Your primary responsibility is managing complexity: defining clear responsibilities and interfaces, limiting coupling, and making the system easier to understand, test, operate, and change. Fluency in data and optimization, paired with a willingness to work with hardware, supports that responsibility. The architecture is still taking shape, and you’ll help establish the foundations for scaling to more machines, processes, and devices.
What You’ll Do
- Collaboratively define component responsibilities, state ownership, and interfaces; remove or simplify unnecessary complexity.
- Build and test production software in Go and Python
- Establish and maintain core software interfaces with data engineering and AI systems
- Evolve existing systems through safe, incremental migrations.
- Resolve integration issues with operators and engineers, including hands-on work with fab equipment.
- Work with cross functional teams to develop requirements and acceptance criteria
What You’ll Need
- 8+ years building production software; productive in Go and Python.