Senior Robotics Engineer

About Kinisi Robotics

We build intelligent humanoid robots designed to perform useful work in warehouses, manufacturing environments, and logistics operations. Our KR1 platform combines advanced robotics, AI, perception, manipulation, and control systems into a single robot capable of operating in real-world environments. We develop much of the stack in-house, including robot hardware, end-effectors, teleoperation systems, robot learning infrastructure, perception systems, and robotics software.

Unlike many robotics companies, we are not building technology demonstrations. We are building robots that perform useful work for real customers. Our robots already exist. Our fleet is growing. Our software stack is growing. We are looking for exceptional robotics engineers to help us build the next generation of robot capabilities.

About the Role

We are looking for Senior Robotics Engineers to help make our robots work reliably, safely, and repeatedly on real hardware.

This is a full-stack robotics software role. Depending on your background, you may work on low-level control, hardware integration, ROS 2 systems, motion planning, calibration, state estimation, networking, behaviours, perception integration, or the systems glue that connects everything together.

Our robotics stack spans:

EtherCAT → ros2_control → controllers → state estimation → perception → motion planning → behaviour trees → deployed robot capability

You do not need to be an expert across every layer of the stack.

We already have strong engineers working across controls, planning, behaviours, AI, perception, and infrastructure.

Instead, we are looking for people who bring deep expertise in one or more areas while being comfortable collaborating across the wider system.

What matters most is your ability to take ownership of difficult robotics problems and turn them into robust capabilities running on real robots.

Whether you are a manipulation specialist, a ros2_control expert, experience with motion planning, a networking guru, a controls engineer, a perception specialist, or a highly capable robotics generalist, we would love to hear from you.

What Success Looks Like

After 12 months you will have:

• Owned and shipped meaningful improvements to the KR1 robotics stack.
• Improved the reliability and robustness of robot behaviour on physical hardware.
• Taken prototypes and demonstrations and turned them into production-ready robot capabilities.
• Reduced engineering time spent debugging fragile system boundaries.
• Improved observability, diagnostics, and maintainability across the robotics stack.
• Helped raise engineering standards across a team where everyone is expected to operate at a senior level.
• Contributed directly to robots performing useful work in real customer environments.

What You’ll Be Doing

Robotics Software Development

• Design, build, test, and deploy robotics software across the robot stack.
• Develop high-quality, maintainable software using modern engineering practices.
• Take ownership of features from concept through to deployment on physical robots.
• Build systems that improve robot reliability, safety, observability, and maintainability.
• Work closely with AI, perception, hardware, and platform teams to deliver complete robot capabilities.

System Integration

• Integrate software across control, planning, perception, networking, and behaviour systems.
• Improve interfaces between different parts of the robot stack.
• Debug complex failures that cross software, hardware, networking, and timing boundaries.
• Support deployment and testing on physical robots.

Robot Capability Development

• Develop new robot behaviours and capabilities.
• Improve manipulation performance and reliability.
• Build tools and infrastructure that accelerate robotics development.
• Explore and implement new capabilities for customer deployments, demonstrations, and future products.

Engineering Leadership

• Help define technical direction within your area of expertise.
• Uphold high software engineering standards.
• Review code and mentor other engineers.
• Contribute to architectural decisions across the robotics stack.

Minimum Qualifications

• Strong proficiency in C++ and Python.
• Strong hands-on ROS 2 experience.
• Experience building, integrating, and debugging real robotics systems.
• Experience working with physical robot hardware rather than simulation alone.
• Comfortable developing and debugging on Linux.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals.
• Ability to independently scope ambiguous problems and drive them through to completion.

Areas of Interest

We are particularly interested in candidates with significant experience in one or more of:

• ros2_control
• EtherCAT and hardware integration
• Manipulation and motion planning
• Whole-body control
• Calibration and robot bring-up
• State estimation and sensor fusion
• Perception integration
• Behaviour trees and task execution
• Robot networking and distributed systems
• Reliability, observability, and debugging of complex robot systems
• Safety systems, fault handling, and recovery behaviours

Deep expertise in any of these areas is valuable, but no single area is required.

Who You’ll Work With

Robotics Software Engineers: developing the control, planning, perception, and behaviour systems that power the KR1 robot.

Robot Learning Engineers: deploying large behaviour models and Vision-Language-Action systems onto physical robots.

Applied Research Scientists: advancing perception, manipulation, and robot learning capabilities.

Mechanical & Electrical Engineers: developing custom robot hardware, sensors, and end-effectors.

A Growing Fleet of KR1 Robots: available for development, testing, experimentation, and deployment.

What This Role Is Not

• This is not a pure research role.
• This is not a simulation-only robotics role.

You will spend your time making real robots work: debugging hardware, improving software, integrating systems, and shipping reliable capabilities onto physical KR1 robots.

Why Join Kinisi?

At Kinisi, you will work on one of the most challenging problems in robotics: building robots that can reliably perform useful work in the real world.

You will have direct access to physical robots, a deeply technical team, and the opportunity to shape the software stack that powers a growing fleet of humanoid robots.

If you have an idea, you can test it on real hardware.

If you improve the robot, you will see the result running in the real world.

We offer competitive salary and equity, comprehensive health cover, conference opportunities, excellent office space, and a highly collaborative engineering culture.

Apply for this role – Please include a CV, your LinkedIn profile and which job you’re applying for.