Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Machine Control Systems

Atomic Machines•Santa Clara, CA

12h•$160,000 - $230,000

About The Position

Atomic Machines is a company developing the Matter Compiler™ technology platform for micromanufacturing, enabling new classes of micromachines. This platform offers manufacturing processes and a materials library beyond traditional semiconductor methods. It is a programmable, multi-process, multi-material system where raw materials are transformed into complete, functional micromachines. The company is based in Emeryville and Santa Clara, California. This role is critical as the company's robotics fleet matures and the Matter Compiler™ is brought online. The position requires an experienced engineer to navigate architectural ambiguities, drive decision-making, and implement engineering rigor, including testing, review, and traceability. The goal is to build a platform that allows process developers and AI to safely program the fab. This role involves significant organizational development alongside technical contributions.

Requirements

5+ years building or debugging systems with real external dependencies: hardware, embedded devices, networked services, or similar.
A track record of making and defending nontrivial architecture decisions (build vs. buy, deployment topology, service boundaries).
Strong Python skills for production systems.
Proficiency in at least one systems or strongly-typed language (C++, Rust, or Go).
Solid grounding in distributed systems fundamentals: state coordination, consistency, failure modes, concurrency.
Experience introducing or maintaining CI/CD, automated testing, or observability tooling in a codebase that didn't already have it.
Comfort operating against an incomplete or contested spec and a bias toward driving clarity.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or related field, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience with real-time or resource-constrained environments, or analogous domains (IoT, edge compute, industrial systems, robotics, warehouses, manufacturing lines, fabrication and automation facilities).
Experience with observability: what to instrument, when logs aren’t enough, how to make failure legible, and instrumenting systems for ML/AI data usability.
Experience introducing testing or CI discipline to a team that lacked it, with concrete examples of gaining buy-in.
Experience evaluating cloud vs. on-prem/edge deployment tradeoffs for latency- or safety-sensitive systems.
Experience debugging issues across multiple system layers: application logic, transport, firmware, hardware.
Genuine energy for translating physical constraints (latency, noise, mechanical tolerance, safety margins) into software behavior.

Responsibilities

Design and build distributed software systems to coordinate state, timing, and behavior across manufacturing hardware.
Write, test, and debug sensors, actuators, and process controllers under real-time and reliability constraints.
Design workflows that bridge manual and automated process steps, and coordinate handoffs between production and process development.
Evolve the existing system, including API development for machine behavior governance, to deliver value without waiting for a clean-slate rewrite.
Instrument systems to make machine and process data legible for human consumption via logs and structured for downstream AI/ML.
Investigate and resolve issues spanning software, firmware, and physical systems.
Establish and model software engineering practices (testing, code review, CI/CD, documentation) for a growing team.
Contribute to system reliability through structured observability, fault handling, and graceful degradation.
Collaborate with mechanical, electrical, and process engineers to translate physical constraints into resilient software behavior.
Partner with engineering leadership to converge architectural visions into a well-reasoned direction.