Careers

Build with us.

Full-time

San Francisco, CA

Robotics · Controls

Founding Robotics Engineer — Controls & Integration

  • Full-time
  • San Francisco, CA

Get our robot plugging in connectors every time, not just once.

About the role

Plugging a connector in once is easy. Doing it every time, testing it and recovering when it fails is the job.

You’re our first robotics hire. You’ll work with the founders on all of it: parts, fixtures, control code and testing.

Pay

$135,000–$165,000 USD per year + equity.

Responsibilities

  • Hook up the arm, gripper, cameras, force sensor and test gear. Calibrate them and keep them in sync.
  • Write the motion and contact control for lining up, pushing in and recovering.
  • Design fingers, fixtures and part carriers, and get them made.
  • Build the full run: part in, joint made, joint tested, and what happens when a step fails.
  • Find out why things fail, from logs and measurements. Track cycle time, broken parts and how often a person steps in.
  • Work with safety on guarding and interlocks, and with the learning engineer to run policies on the robot.

Experience

  • You’ve built or commissioned a robot or automation station and can explain your choices.
  • C++ and Python on Linux, including code that talks to hardware.
  • Coordinate frames, calibration, motion control, and how a robot behaves when it touches things.
  • You can chase a fault through mechanical, electrical and software, with measurements.

Useful experience

  • Connector work, force-guided manipulation or factory commissioning.
  • CAD and fixture design, industrial I/O, PLC integration or electrical test equipment.
  • Robot SDKs, ROS 2 or running learned policies on hardware.

First project

Get one connector task running with a real pass/fail test and a recovery that works the same way each time. Then pick what to fix next.

Robotics · Learning

Robot Learning Engineer — Manipulation

  • Full-time
  • San Francisco, CA

Teach the robot connector work from demonstrations and its own tries, and measure how well it holds up.

About the role

We want the robot to learn connector work from demonstrations, touch and its own test results. You’ll find out where learning helps and what it takes to switch to a new connector.

You’ll own data, training and running models on the robot, with the founders and the controls engineer. A result counts when the joint passes its test, the robot recovers on its own and no one has to step in. Start date follows the prototype build.

Pay

$150,000–$180,000 USD per year + equity.

Responsibilities

  • Build tools that record demonstrations and corrections, in sync with what the robot did and whether the part passed.
  • Train imitation-learning policies. Try reinforcement learning where it fixes a real failure.
  • Run models on the robot within its calibration, latency and control limits.
  • Version data and checkpoints. Build tools to replay attempts and compare runs.
  • Test policies against hand-written control on fresh parts: misses, damage, manual fixes.
  • Move to a second connector and count what it took: demos, tooling and engineering time.

Experience

  • You’ve trained a policy, run it on a real robot and dug into why it failed.
  • Training and evaluation code in Python, with PyTorch or JAX.
  • Hands-on imitation or reinforcement learning, and how the data you collect shapes the result.
  • You know robot observations, actions and timing, and can debug everything around the model.
  • You can set up a test that tells a better model apart from a change in parts or fixtures.

Useful experience

  • Insertion tasks, action-chunking policies or learning from human corrections.
  • Force or tactile sensing, LeRobot or SERL.
  • C++, ROS 2, edge inference or adapting policies across parts and fixtures.

First project

Collect demonstrations and build a repeatable test for the first connector. Train a first policy, compare it with the programmed controller, and let its failures pick the next experiment.

Contract

San Francisco shoots · Remote editing

Marketing · Content

Technical Content Producer

  • Contract
  • San Francisco shoots
  • Remote editing

Film and edit what we build: short videos, photos and posts about the robot.

About the role

Show people what we’re building. You’ll follow a robot test from setup to result and make it worth watching, without overselling it.

Three-month contract. Shoots in San Francisco, editing from anywhere. The founders check the technical claims and publish.

Pay

$1,500–$2,000 USD a month, three months to start. We agree the scope and revisions up front.

Responsibilities

  • Plan and shoot one half-day a month around a test or a build.
  • Deliver two short edited videos a month, from your footage and clips the team records.
  • Captions, social cuts, a few stills and four short posts.
  • Show the difference between a lucky try and a result that holds up.
  • Keep footage and project files organized so we can reuse them.

Experience

  • A portfolio of your own shooting and editing.
  • You can light, record sound, film and edit a small shoot on your own.
  • Clear writing, and you ask when you don’t understand the engineering.
  • Free for shoots in San Francisco, and fine working around half-built machines.

Useful experience

  • Experience filming in a factory, lab or machine shop.
  • Photography or motion graphics for robotics and hardware.
  • Video work for LinkedIn, X, YouTube or Instagram.

First project

One short film of one test: the problem, how we check the part, and what the result means. It sets the format for the next month.

Apply

Apply.

Send us something you built. No cover letter.

or email careers@defexrobotics.com