Systems Engineer
Deft Robotics
Software Engineering
California, USA
USD 100k-200k / year + Equity
Posted on Mar 28, 2026
About Deft Robotics
Our mission is to build the world’s first labor agency that deploys dexterous robots as its primary workforce.
- We start by deploying wheeled humanoid robots in industrial manufacturing and assembly lines.
- You’ll be joining a team of extremely hardcore and self-motivated engineers, scientists, and operators who focus on winning 24/7.
- You will develop and own entire systems from design to deployment, playing a foundational role in deploying 5000+ robots by 2031.
What You'll Do
- Develop and maintain core software infrastructure supporting the robot data collection stack.
- Improve reliability and performance across the robotics software stack by diagnosing system bottlenecks and failure modes.
- Implement and maintain software libraries and device drivers for new sensor suites and in-house hardware modules.
- Contribute to systems that support safe robot operation, including monitoring, detection, and guardrails to prevent unsafe interactions.
- Develop testing infrastructure for robotics software, including unit, integration, and regression testing frameworks.
- Build the observability layer for robotic systems, including telemetry, logging, and diagnostics.
- Design and implement fleet management infrastructure, including robot health monitoring, software updates, staged rollouts, and rollback mechanisms.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Strong programming experience in C/C++ and familiarity with Python.
- Experience developing software for Linux-based systems, including multi-threaded programming, memory management, and performance optimization.
- Experience diagnosing and resolving reliability or performance issues in complex software systems.
- Experience working with hardware–software interfaces, such as sensors, embedded devices, or networking hardware.
- Strong understanding of systems fundamentals, including operating systems, networking, and concurrent programming.
- Ability to design and implement reliable systems that interact with hardware and real-world environments.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience developing production software for robotics systems or other hardware-interfacing platforms.
- Experience working with embedded or edge computing environments.
- Experience with Linux systems internals, including kernel development, driver development, or low-level performance profiling.
- Experience designing or operating distributed systems or cloud infrastructure.
- Experience building systems for monitoring, observability, or remote diagnostics in deployed environments.
- Experience working with embedded Linux build systems such as Yocto or similar tools.
- Evidence of building or contributing to complex systems projects, such as open-source infrastructure, research systems, or publications at top systems venues.
Hiring Process
- Phone screen + 2 virtual technical interviews + onsite
Expected Compensation
- $100,000 - $200,000 annual salary + cash and stock awards + benefits
- The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.