Sr. Robotics Field Engineer

Third Wave Automation•Union City, CA

14h•$125,000 - $165,000•Onsite

About The Position

Third Wave Automation is looking for a Sr. Field Engineer. Our Robotics Deployment Operations team is responsible for the setup, integration, and maintenance of our autonomous forklifts at customer sites. The team works directly with customers at every stage of the process, serves as a first point of customer contact during deployment through product support, and works closely with the offsite TWA engineering team to ensure customer success. This role includes 50-70% travel.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree or higher in Robotics, Engineering, Computer Science or related technical field.
6+ years of field experience coordinating with customers, being well-versed in various robotics expertise including hardware, software, and network.
Outstanding customer relationship management skills.
Understanding and experience with change management processes.
Industrial automation experience. Experience working with and repairing industrial machinery.
Linux experience (command-line tools, networking, administration).
Programming experience (Python, C++) preferred.
Excellent written and interpersonal communication skills.
Experience with standard office productivity tools (Google suite, Slack, etc.).
Ability to write tools and scripts to automate repetitive tasks.
Experience working in a full-scale warehouse environment.
Must be able to obtain and maintain forklift certification (company-provided training and certification available).

Responsibilities

Own the site as technical lead with the Field Engineering Manager: plan, risks, and the go / no-go call when the system is not ready for operations.
Lead and coordinate the setup, integration, and maintenance of our autonomous forklifts at customer sites.
Report on fleet adoption and utilization issues and metrics, including deployment progress, and effectively escalate technical risks by working closely with the Third Wave Customer Success, Product, and Engineering teams to improve product reliability and performance.
Debug the on-site stack from first principles — Linux, networking, services, logs/telemetry, and integrations — and leave a root-cause write-up engineering can act on, not a workaround that fails when you leave.
Do your own on-robot hardware work when that is the fastest path: hand tools, parts replacement, retrofits, and field upgrades.
Manage and maintain the site system configuration while also providing improvements for future system configurations.
Interface and integrate with the customer warehouse management system (WMS).
Be the face of the company to our customers.
Work directly with the customer, serving as a first point of contact during product deployment through Go Live.
Be a subject matter expert on how our system is deployed and operated.
Engage with pertinent internal stakeholders to ensure clear and comprehensive training on operating the TWA fleet and best practices are provided to the customer.
Turn what you learn on site into the system of record: implementation playbooks, optimization notes, and best practices other engineers can run without calling you.
Support on-site product testing and provide detailed feedback.
Write tools and scripts that remove repetitive setup and debug work, and use LLMs and coding assistants to triage logs, draft diagnostics, and generate first-pass fixes.