Field Engineering Technician

Chef Robotics•Remote, United States

10d•Onsite

About The Position

Chef Robotics is seeking a hands-on Field Engineering Technician to maintain and improve the performance of deployed robotic food-portioning modules at customer food-production sites. The role diagnoses root causes, repairs equipment, tunes module configurations through the HMI, and shares field learnings with Engineering teams. The technician works on-site at customer facilities across their region, partnering with customer operations teams to investigate issues, perform repairs and preventive maintenance, validate fixes, and tune modules for different ingredients, containers, and production-line conditions. The role also involves travel to customer sites outside the region for new deployments or service. Remote support is provided by Robotic Operations Engineers, Systems Reliability Engineers, and Forward Deployment Engineers. The technician supplies first-hand field data to Engineering to help turn recurring failures into permanent fixes. Customer environments include food-manufacturing facilities, sometimes refrigerated and involving washdown procedures. The work may involve longer hours in these environments. This is a customer-facing role in an early-stage startup, with schedules following customer production and potentially including early mornings, weekends, and off-hours. The position is regional, based in the LA or NY region, with travel to customer facilities as needed, up to approximately 50%.

Requirements

2–5 years of hands-on experience maintaining, troubleshooting, or commissioning automated equipment such as robotics, mechatronics, industrial automation, packaging, or food-processing machinery.
Ability to troubleshoot electrical and mechanical systems, read schematics, use a multimeter, and work with sensors, motors, drives, and pneumatics.
Experience with HMIs, PLCs, or equipment parameter configuration, and a methodical approach to changing settings, observing results, and iterating.
Systematic problem-solving ability, including forming hypotheses, isolating variables, and documenting findings so others can reproduce them.
Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to provide Engineering with actionable, evidence-backed feedback.
Comfort with laptops, logs, and data tools; basic Linux or command-line experience is a plus.
Associate degree or technical certification in mechatronics, electronics, robotics, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Ability to travel regionally and work in food-production environments, including washdown, cold, and noisy areas, while wearing PPE.

Nice To Haves

Linux experience.
Basic Linux or command-line experience.

Responsibilities

Perform field repairs and diagnostics on Chef modules across mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, sensor, and controls systems, investigating root causes rather than stopping at the failed part.
Tune and validate module configurations and parameters through the HMI to improve throughput, accuracy, and uptime for customer ingredients, containers, and line conditions; change one variable at a time and record results.
Use logs, fleet data, and on-site observations to distinguish configuration, hardware, and software causes, and escalate evidence-based findings to Systems Reliability Engineers.
Provide Engineering with structured feedback about recurring failure modes, serviceability and design issues, configuration learnings, and customer needs observed in the field.
Perform scheduled preventive maintenance and document wear trends and findings.
Test new meals and ingredients by setting up modules, tuning them, recording results, and recommending settings.
Track and log hardware requests, part numbers, and quantities through the hardware request workflow.
Write and improve runbooks, work instructions, and troubleshooting guides based on field experience.
Coordinate with third-party technicians at customer sites and guide customer operators in day-to-day module care and handling.
Communicate findings, changes made, and expected outcomes clearly to customer operations teams.
Follow customer-site safety, food-safety, and lockout/tagout requirements.