Senior Robotics Platform Engineering Lead

The Role: Platform is the core part of what makes Sunrise succeed: the software that lets a robotic cell see, move, and recover, and the simulation pipeline we use to build and test all of it. You will own it.

You will own what Platform builds and why: which problems it solves next, what done means, and when it lands. This is not a backlog administration job. The engineers you will work with have strong, well-argued technical opinions. You need the robotics depth to argue back with evidence, to challenge an estimate credibly, and to judge when the elegant architecture is worth the time and when it is not. The same judgment runs toward the customer: what Platform builds becomes the capabilities that decide which processes we can automate and which markets we can enter, so every technical trade-off is also a customer value decision.

What you’ll do

• Own the Platform roadmap

  • Run discovery and prioritization: turn ideas from customers, engineers, and leadership into evidenced, prioritized jobs to be done.
  • Turn prioritized jobs to be done into initiatives: write the specs, set milestones the team can commit to, and sequence them against the Sunrise roadmap.
  • In robot software, the cost of change is the core problem: a wrong requirement costs months, not days. Work out how much specification each decision needs, and catch the expensive mistakes before anyone builds them.

• Run delivery with engineering

  • Run cycle planning for the pillar, name the outcome of each cycle, and check that the planned work adds up to that outcome.
  • Track dates against milestones with each initiative's technical lead. When estimates and targets disagree, cut scope, add people, or move the date, explicitly and early.
  • Sign off that delivered work meets the requirements and the quality bar written in the spec.

• Be the technical counterpart

  • Work daily with team leads and senior engineers on real trade-offs: perception accuracy against cycle time, simulation fidelity against speed, ship now against build it properly.
  • Challenge estimates and accept challenge back. Arguments here run on evidence, not seniority.

• Carry the customer into the platform

  • Our customers are high-mix manufacturers, and the people who matter most are operators and facility managers. Bring their reality into every prioritization decision.
  • Work with the deployment team so what Platform ships works on a customer's factory floor, not just in the lab.

What you’ll need:

• A robotics engineering background. You have built and shipped robot software (perception, motion planning, manipulation, or robotics simulation) as an engineer or technical lead. This is a must. The role cannot be done from product experience alone.

• Senior product experience. You have owned a technical product area with 10 or more engineers and carried it from problem to shipped, including the messy middle.

• Spec writing where the cost of change is high. Specs and requirements that engineers respect and that hold up months later.

• Estimation and delivery discipline. Milestones, estimates with stated risk, and honest reforecasting when the numbers disagree.

• Argument by evidence. You can disagree with a very senior engineer and change their mind, or have yours changed, without the relationship taking damage.

• Excellent written English. We are remote and run on documents, not slides.

• A working grasp of learned robotics. ML-driven perception and control alongside classical methods, enough to weigh bets between them.

What Makes You Stand Out:

• Industrial automation or manufacturing experience in high-mix environments.
• Hands-on time with simulation tooling such as Isaac Sim.
• Experience as the first or most senior product person in a technical area, defining the ways of working rather than inheriting them.
• Serious daily use of AI tools in product work.