Y Combinator Robotics Firmware Engineer
Summary
Designs and debugs low-level software for physical robots, fixing hardware-software integration issues and ensuring reliable operation in real-world environments.
Overview
We’re seeking a Robotics Firmware Engineer to join our NYC-based team (we are an in-person company) to own the hard problems where software meets metal. Our robots run every day in the lab and at customer sites; when joints freeze, buses flake, or safety state is wrong, you are the person who finds the real cause and ships the fix. We are an early stage company moving very fast in a rapidly growing space, and welcome people from any background as long as you’re excited to join our mission, drive immediate impact, and create a future where automation is accessible to all.
Who You Are
- 2+ years shipping firmware on real robots or similarly unforgiving embedded systems
- You’re dangerous with LLMs because you know when they're wrong
- Comfortable from scope traces and schematics up through kernel/driver and into application control loops
- You’ve identified, diagnosed, and fixed intermittent failures end-to-end (timing, noise, thermal, state machines)
- You produce production-quality code and can pinch-hit outside pure firmware when the robot needs it
- You can look at a ticket backlog and identify the most important thing to work on next
What You’ll Do
- Debug and permanently fix HW/SW interface failures that kill uptime (actuators, buses, sensors, recovery paths)
- Tweak all the Linux parameters nobody knows about to get reliable, predictable OS performance
- Help design and implement a safety system with real guarantees for Operator's warehouse work
- Write control interfaces for any new devices we want to onboard (new EEs, cameras, barcode scanners, etc)
- Identify key metrics to monitor for predictive failure signals and overall hardware health
Bonus Points
- MechE/EE experience for designing and manufacturing robotics components including custom PCBs, engineered parts, and more.