Systems Engineer, Robotics

TAR•San Francisco, CA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

As a Systems Engineer for the robotics program, you own the machine-level picture: requirements, interfaces, error and performance budgets, verification, and safety, while design engineers own their subsystems. You take robots from concept of operations through integration, bring-up, and field commissioning, and you own the evidence that each one performs to spec. This is a mid to senior level individual contributor role based at our San Francisco robotics facility, with travel to the West Texas site for hands-on supervision.

Requirements

5+ years of systems engineering, systems integration, or multi-disciplinary design engineering on complex robotic or electromechanical systems.
Cross-discipline fluency spanning mechanical, electrical, and software, with enough depth in each to engage subsystem owners on the details.
Experience taking a machine or vehicle end to end, from prototype to deployment, at the system level.
Requirements definition, flow-down, and traceability on hardware programs.
Strong cross-discipline debugging with scopes, logic analyzers, telemetry, and logs, and a structured approach to isolating a fault and routing it to the right owner.
Cross-functional stakeholder management and a track record of driving decisions through influence rather than authority.
Python or similar for analysis, budgets, and tooling.

Nice To Haves

Safety analysis and functional safety for mobile machinery or heavy equipment.
FMEA, FRACAS, or formal reliability program experience.
Field commissioning of outdoor or industrial systems.
Experience as the first systems hire on a program.
Controls background, including system identification, tuning, and performance characterization.

Responsibilities

Derive machine-level requirements from real deployment targets, such as cycle time, placement accuracy, and uptime, partnering with design engineers so every subsystem builds toward the same numbers.
Develop the use cases and concept of operations that ground those requirements, covering how each machine is loaded, positioned, operated, recovered, and maintained on a working site, including the off-nominal cases design teams need to see early.
Partner with system owners as they design the interfaces between subsystems (mechanical mounting, power, data buses, timing, and software contracts), brokering agreements between them so integration issues surface on paper, not in the field.
Build the error and performance budgets that determine whether a machine can place a module to spec, and hold designs accountable to them.
Act as the backstop for system performance, watching for risks and failures that span mechanical, electrical, firmware, and software and surfacing them before they compound.
Plan and run verification and validation at the machine level, own the evidence that a design meets its requirements, and bring FMEA and reliability analysis to design teams as a working tool rather than a gate.
Own the safety architecture for machines that move heavy loads around people: E-stops, interlocks, safety zones, and operational limits.
Support integration and bring-up of complete machines from first article through field-ready, then commission them in West Texas and own the feedback loop from the site back into requirements and use cases.
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with demonstrated experience guiding cross-functional programs to a cohesive product.