Robotics Diagnostics Engineer

Nimble•San Francisco, CA

47d•$145,000 - $190,000

About The Position

You will own the development and architecture of our next-generation robotics diagnostic system, which is crucial for improving the reliability and maintainability of the robotic fleet. This system must proactively detect and surface anomalies across the entire robot stack-from low-level firmware glitches to complex hardware failures-either automatically during operation or upon manual trigger. You will be the architect of the diagnostic data structure, translating complex sensor readings and error logs into actionable, easy-to-read health reports that accelerate root cause analysis for engineering, manufacturing, and support teams. This role requires tight collaboration with our Embedded Software and Infrastructure teams, and the Operations team to build a robust, scalable data pipeline.

Requirements

BS or MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or a related technical discipline.
3+ years of professional experience in developing diagnostics, monitoring, or telemetry systems for complex electro-mechanical devices, robotics, or embedded systems.
Proficiency in software development (e.g., C++, Python) with specific experience in writing testable, robust code for embedded environments or robotics middleware.
Experience with data structuring, schema design, and working with data ingestion pipelines (e.g., utilizing message queues, time-series databases, or cloud data storage).
Deep understanding of common robotics hardware and firmware failure modes, including motor control systems, sensor interfaces (e.g., CAN, I2C, Serial, USB), and power management systems.
Technical triaging skills, familiarity with Ishikawa diagram are big plus.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with interpreting hardware schematics and leveraging low-level system logs to identify failure points.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and maintain the on-robot diagnostic framework, enabling both autonomous background checks and on-demand manual diagnostic scans.
Define the diagnostic data schema, ensuring efficient, standardized, and human-readable reporting of fault codes, event logs, and status checks. This data structure must be scalable and optimized for use by both on-robot systems and cloud-based analytics tools.
Work closely with embedded software and hardware teams to develop sophisticated diagnostic routines that surface hardware issues, abnormal sensor behavior (e.g., drift, noise, and communication failures), motor anomalies, and transient firmware glitches.
Collaborate with the Infrastructure team to architect and build the data pipeline responsible for reliably collecting, storing (e.g., S3 or data lake), and processing high volumes of diagnostic data from the robot fleet.
Ensure diagnostics generate clear, prioritized, and contextualized reports that summarize the state of the robot, enabling engineers to quickly understand the root cause of an abnormality without extensive log diving.