Robotics Forward Deployed Engineer

Tutor Intelligence•Watertown, MA

3d•$80,000 - $160,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Tutor Intelligence is seeking a technically credible, customer-oriented engineer to manage a portfolio of customer sites that utilize Tutor robots in production. This role serves as the primary partner for each site, responsible for the operational and technical success of robot deployments. While not directly involved in product roadmap development or core product engineering, the position requires writing code for scripts, tooling, dashboards, and playbook logic to automate manual interventions. The goal is to reduce reliance on manual processes over time and solve complex, multi-factor problems. The role involves developing in-depth knowledge of robot behavior in real-world settings, diagnosing issues across software, mechanical, and process domains, and collaborating with the engineering team to implement effective solutions. This is a relationship-driven role that requires significant on-site presence at customer facilities, remote diagnostic work, and ongoing partnership with customer engineering and operations leaders. Insights gained from the field will directly influence the product roadmap, making this a unique position at the intersection of robotics, operations, and customer partnership.

Requirements

3–7+ years in a technical, ideally customer-facing role: applications/field engineering, robotics deployment, solutions engineering, technical account management, or similar.
Technical depth in at least one of: robotics, industrial automation, controls, mechatronics, manufacturing systems, or warehouse/logistics technology.
Comfortable working hands-on with both software and physical systems in messy operational environments. You can read logs and telemetry, reason about a system you didn't build, and write the scripts/tooling to automate a manual process — you don't need to have built the robot from scratch.
Thrives in ambiguity — can take a vague, half-described, multi-factor problem with no clear owner and drive it to resolution.
Strong judgment about what to fix yourself, what to automate, and what to escalate.
Genuine relationship orientation — you take pride in being trusted by a customer over years, not just in shipping a project.
Clear communication in both directions: technically credible with customer engineering and ops teams, and plain-spoken with non-technical operators and leaders.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience deploying or supporting robotics in production.
Background in warehouse, manufacturing, or other industrial operations.
Experience bringing field context into engineering decisions to resolve technical issues.
Deep interest in robotics, automation, or the future of physical AI.

Responsibilities

Own a portfolio of customer sites end-to-end: be the primary technical partner for each, build deep trust with their operations, engineering, and maintenance teams, and be accountable for the operational and technical success of those deployments.
Automate yourself out of the repetitive work. Convert recurring manual interventions into tooling, scripts, and playbooks that your customers and our remote team can run without you. The fleet grows; your manual workload shouldn't. This is the core of the job, not a side effect.
Develop deep working knowledge of our robot systems — software, hardware, and operational characteristics — sufficient to diagnose issues credibly and build real solutions at the boundary of the product.
Diagnose and resolve ambiguous, multi-factor issues in real-world environments — across software configuration, mechanical adjustment, process change, and root-cause analysis — and own the ones with no playbook yet.
Partner with engineering on the deeper fixes: package high-confidence cases with repro conditions, logs, and a likely root cause, and bring field validation rather than just a complaint.
Track the health and performance of your fleet — uptime, reliability, throughput, customer satisfaction — and act proactively on early signals.
Be the voice of your customers in our internal roadmap conversations; translate field reality into structured product insight.
Partner with Account Executives on expansion conversations, where operational success creates natural openings for growth.