Field Engineering Technician, New York Region

Chef Robotics•New York, NY

10d•Onsite

About The Position

Chef Robotics is seeking a hands-on Field Engineering Technician to keep its deployed robotic food-portioning modules performing at customer food production sites. The technician diagnoses root causes, repairs equipment, tunes module configurations through the HMI, and relays field learnings to Engineering teams. The role is based in the New York region and involves working on-site at customer facilities across the region, partnering with customer operations teams to understand issues, perform repairs and preventative maintenance, validate fixes, and tune modules for each customer’s ingredients, containers, and production-line conditions. Travel to customer sites outside the region may also be required for deployments or service. Travel may be up to approximately 50%. The technician receives remote support from Robotic Operations Engineers, Systems Reliability Engineers, and Forward Deployment Engineers, and provides field data to Engineering to help turn recurring failures into permanent fixes. Customer environments are food-manufacturing facilities, which may be refrigerated and have washdown procedures. The position requires working longer hours in these environments as needed. It is customer-facing, and schedules follow customer production, potentially including early mornings, weekends, and off-hours. The role is suited to someone who enjoys technical problem-solving in a fast-paced, dynamic early-stage startup and wants to contribute to customer uptime and future product design.

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.
Comfort with electrical and mechanical troubleshooting, including reading schematics, using a multimeter, and working with sensors, motors, drives, and pneumatics.
Experience with HMIs, PLCs, or equipment parameter configuration, and the discipline to change settings, observe results, and iterate methodically.
Systematic problem-solving skills, 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 using laptops, logs, and data tools.
Ability to travel regionally and work in food-production environments, including washdown, cold, and noisy areas, while wearing PPE.
Associate degree or technical certification in mechatronics, electronics, robotics, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Linux experience; basic Linux or command-line experience is a plus.

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-specific ingredients, containers, and line conditions; change one variable at a time and record results.
Use logs, fleet data, and on-site observation to distinguish configuration, hardware, and software causes, and escalate evidence-backed 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 preventative maintenance and document wear trends and findings.
Test new meals and ingredients by setting up and tuning modules, recording results, and recommending settings.
Track and log hardware requests, part numbers, and quantities using the hardware request workflow.
Write and improve runbooks, work instructions, and troubleshooting guides based on field learnings.
Coordinate with third-party technicians at customer sites and guide customer operators on day-to-day module care and handling.
Communicate clearly with customer operations teams about findings, changes made, and expected outcomes.
Follow customer-site safety, food-safety, and lockout/tagout requirements.