Software Engineer, UI/UX
Summary
Owns the operator-facing software for BurnBot's remotely prescribed-fire machines: mission planning and mapping, live telemetry/video supervision, alarms, and fleet tooling. Day-to-day is production front-end work in TypeScript/React with geospatial UI (Mapbox/Leaflet/deck.gl), plus hands-on UX design and research with field crews.
About BurnBot
Wildfire has stopped being a season. BurnBot builds the machines that get ahead of it — remotely operated systems that apply and contain prescribed fire, and platforms that clear heavy fuel on terrain that isn’t safe for crews.
Our fleet is at work today for PG&E, CAL FIRE, the U.S. Forest Service, Caltrans, fire districts, and tribal nations across California, Oregon, and Washington — treating land at up to 40x the pace of conventional methods. We’re roboticists, engineers, and career fire practitioners. Hardware we design in South San Francisco is in the dirt within weeks, and the people who designed it are usually standing next to it.
THE ROLE
One operator supervising several machines on a live burn is the whole economic argument for what we build. That happens or doesn’t happen in the interface.
You’ll own the software people actually touch: mission planning, live supervision, mapping, alarms, and the fleet tooling behind them — designed for someone in gloves, in the sun, with smoke in the air.
WHAT YOU’LL OWN
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The operator interface — live telemetry, video, machine state, and controls that stay legible under pressure
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Mission planning and mapping: drawing treatment boundaries, setting plans, and reviewing what actually got treated
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Alarms and alerts. What interrupts an operator, how loudly, and what it asks them to do
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The design work itself. You’ll do your own UX here — research with crews, sketches, and the built thing.
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A design system that keeps our tools coherent as the fleet and the team grow
WHAT YOU’LL BRING
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5+ years building production front-end software, with strong TypeScript and React (or equivalent)
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Experience with real-time and streaming data in the browser — telemetry, video, or live state
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Mapping and geospatial UI work: Mapbox, Leaflet, deck.gl, or similar
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Genuine design sense. You can take a vague need and come back with something usable
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Testing discipline, because this software runs next to fire
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Willingness to sit with operators in the field and watch your interface fail in front of you
NICE TO HAVE
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Robotics, teleoperation, or industrial HMI interfaces
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ROS web bridges, WebRTC, or low-latency video
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Safety-critical or high-consequence UI experience
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A design background before, or alongside, the engineering one
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Wildland fire, forestry, or land management background