Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Aerospace, Deep Tech

Staff Software Engineer - Infrastructure

San Francisco, CAOnsiteFull TimeStaffPosted 21 days agoVisa sponsorship available

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Required skills

infrastructure
robotics
autonomous systems
data centers
fleet management
networking
remote access
real-time video
CI
observability

Nice to have

edge traffic
large system migration
breaking changes
tooling

Role summary

Watney is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to own and lead the development of critical infrastructure for their autonomous robotic systems, starting with data centers. This role involves managing the fleet's networking, remote access, real-time video pipelines, CI/CD, observability, and alerting. You will define safe release processes, manage data lifecycle and costs, and lead infrastructure initiatives across engineering, ML, and fleet operations teams. The ideal candidate has experience leading cross-team infrastructure changes, owning production networking or edge traffic, migrating large systems, and building reliable tooling for engineers.

Our Mission

Expand human ambition in the physical world.

Critical infrastructure is constrained by labor shortages, hazardous working conditions, and operational complexity. Watney builds and deploys autonomous robotic systems that increase the speed and capacity of buildout, starting with data centers.

About the Role

At Watney, infrastructure engineers keep a fleet of robots in the field connected and safe to change. The robots do production work at customer sites and stream real-time video from their cameras. The same infrastructure carries that video and data to our ML team and the rest of engineering.

Changing software on robots that are doing real work, over customer networks we do not control, is a problem the field has not settled: how a change reaches the fleet safely, and how video and data keep moving when a network fails.

Our software engineers run this infrastructure today alongside the robot software. You will partner with them, own it full time, and decide what a safe release looks like. Every robot in the field depends on that answer. At Staff, you lead the infrastructure changes that cross teams.

What You’ll Do

Own networking, remote access, and the real-time video pipelines for the fleet.
Own CI, observability, and alerting for the fleet and the services behind it.
Build the release gate and rollout process for the fleet, and own the bar a change must clear.
Decide where data lives, how it is kept, and what our infrastructure costs to run.
Lead infrastructure changes with the software engineers who run this infrastructure today, and across the ML and fleet operations teams who depend on it.

You May Be a Good Fit If You:

Have led an infrastructure change across several teams, or founded the team that owns one.
Have owned production networking or edge traffic for a large system.
Have migrated a large system in stages, through breaking changes, without breaking its users.
Have owned observability and alerting for a production system.
Have built tooling that other engineers rely on every day.

We’re committed to building a diverse, inclusive team. At Watney Robotics, we welcome people of all backgrounds and identities, and we make hiring decisions based on skills, experience, and potential. If you’re passionate about robotics but don’t meet every requirement, we still encourage you to apply!

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