Robotics Software Engineer

Company: Chef Robotics
Location: San Francisco
Posted on: February 18, 2026

Job Description:

Job Description Job Description About Our Team Chef Robotics is on a mission to accelerate the advent of intelligent machines in the physical world. As the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT has shown, AI has the potential to drive immense change. However, we believe AI’s biggest impact will be in the physical world, given industries like manufacturing, food, and transportation represent 90% of global GDP. We're starting with food, with a goal to put an intelligent robot in every commercial kitchen in the world. We have signed multiple multi-year contracts with various large food companies and we are growing fast. We're backed by investors like Kleiner Perkins, Construct, Bloomberg BETA and Promus Ventures. We have a great team, where you will be surrounded by talented engineers and tech leaders from companies like Cruise, Zoox, Google, Verb Surgical, Tesla, Nuro, Vicarious, Amazon Robotics, Strateos, Built Robotics, Facebook, Plenty, Yelp, and Microsoft. About the Role As a Robotics Software Engineer at Chef Robotics, you’ll help shape the future of automation in food production. You'll play a critical role in designing and developing a scalable manipulation system that powers our robots to prepare millions of meals with precision, consistency, and reliability in high-throughput environments. As a small team, we are focused on building a positive in-office culture. We are looking for individuals who are available to work onsite at the office five days a week and can work start-up-oriented hours. Responsibilities: Develop classical or ML/RL-based motion planning and manipulation algorithms that work across thousands of different foods with varying physical properties (stickiness, density, viscosity, etc.). Develop novel algorithms to learn ingredient properties on-the-fly and intelligently adapt manipulation parameters. Incorporate new sensor data (e.g., force control, cameras) for trajectory optimization and metrics to measure ingredient manipulation performance. Analyze manipulation performance across ingredients and optimize trajectories for throughput. Contribute to overall software architecture design and standards, including designing interfaces between subsystems. Champion engineering excellence, ensuring high-quality, well-structured, and well-tested code. Stay up-to-date with the latest robotics research and apply insights in a practical way to our system. Qualifications: BS, MS, or PhD in computer science, robotics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or related field. 5 years of experience in Python and/or C++. Experience leading and shipping complex software projects. Understanding both classical and machine/reinforcement learning approaches to robot manipulation, and the tradeoffs between various techniques. Experience with robotic waypoint generation, path planning, and trajectory smoothing. Experience with common deep learning frameworks like Tensorflow or Pytorch. Excellent software engineering fundamentals. Excellent mathematical skills, especially with geometry, probability and statistics, linear algebra, and machine learning. Bonus Points: Startup experience. You’ve shipped working products under tight deadlines. Robotics research experience, including publications. Experience with trajectory optimization. Experience with the robotics tech stack, e.g., Linux, ROS, OpenCV, CUDA. Experience with calibration, state estimation, and sensor fusion. Experience with basic mechatronics and electronics. Chef is an early-stage startup where equity is a major part of the compensation package. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position. Within the range, individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. In addition to salary and early-stage equity, we offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, dental, and vision insurance, commuter benefits, flexible paid time off (PTO), catered lunch, and 401(k) matching. Equal Opportunity Employer We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizen status, uniform service member and veteran status, marital status, age, pregnancy status, protected medical condition, genetic information, disability, or any other protected status. Multiple studies have found that a higher percentage of women and BIPOC candidates won't apply if they don't meet every listed qualification. Chef values candidates of all backgrounds. If you find yourself excited by our mission but you don't check every box in the description, we encourage you to apply anyway! We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

Keywords: Chef Robotics, Carmichael , Robotics Software Engineer, IT / Software / Systems , San Francisco, California