Robotics Software Engineer

We have been quietly building the foundational layers of our Physical AI Scientist platform:
🤖 Physical AI that can operate scientific instruments with human-level dexterity.
🧪 Scientific AI that can analyze results, reason about next steps, and close the loop autonomously.

This is an incredibly ambitious mission, but we believe that a team of ambitious people with high ownership can accomplish incredible things.

• We’re a team of passionate, mission-driven engineers from companies like Tesla, Amazon, SpaceX, and Neuralink. We’re collaborative and love moving fast, both with our product and on team trips skiing or go-karting!

• As a team, we love nerding out about engineering and robotics — plus other topics like race cars or cooking. We like learning new things and then sharing our new knowledge with each other.

• Our team is opinionated and straightforward. We don’t mind intense discussions about design tradeoffs. If we have arguments or miscommunication, we resolve conflicts quickly and empathetically.

• Develop robotic solutions to manipulate and control biology tools designed for humans

• Develop and implement motion planning algorithms to avoid collisions in a complex and dynamic environment

• Use computer vision to work with consumables and equipment that humans use

• Integrate, test, and debug software solutions in simulation and on physical robots

• Work with partner scientists at customer labs to understand their pain points, ideate on creative solutions, decompose into individual projects, and guide implementation and deployment

• Besides your focus on robustness and performance, you’ll be expected to identify opportunities for simplification, and to design for scalability

• This position is 100% in-person, you must be able to come on-site to our San Francisco office. We do not offer hybrid roles at Medra. We do offer relocation benefits for applicants that need to relocate.

• 4+ years of experience designing and building algorithms for robotics systems

• Experience or familiarity with robot arm manipulators

• Proficient in Python

• Relevant research/work experience in one or more of the following areas: motion planning and trajectory optimization, kinematics and dynamics, and control.

• Experience with software engineering tools and best practices in production

• A hacker’s mindset - getting quickly to a good-enough solution

• A willingness to wear many hats / a flexible attitude towards responsibilities and scope

• BS/MS/Ph.D. in Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent experience

• Experience with robotic simulation systems such as PyBullet or MuJoCo

• Experience with robotics in a laboratory or manufacturing environment

• Understanding of software communication protocols (ZMQ, Redis, gRPC, etc…)

• Contribution to software for a hardware product that shipped

• Experience with robotics manipulation