Robot Platform Engineer - Humanoid (Mensch)

Zurich. Posted 4 months ago

The role

You will develop and maintain the software base that connects hardware, controls, middleware, and applications for the 4NE1 humanoid robot. You will work at the interface of robotics software, embedded systems, distributed systems, and hardware integration.

What you will do

Develop and maintain the software abstraction layer connecting hardware to the platform software.
Integrate actuators, joints, limbs, hands, sensors, safety systems, and robot controllers.
Create hardware interfaces for control, planning, and application layers.
Integrate software components across the humanoid stack including locomotion and perception.
Design communication paths between embedded systems and higher application levels.
Develop and maintain the operative state machine of the humanoid robot.
Implement controller switching and logic for mode transitions.
Develop software for startup, calibration, homing, and shutdown processes.
Develop watchdog and fault management mechanisms.
Develop gRPC-based robot control services and APIs.

Required qualifications

Bachelor or Master degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Software Engineering, Mechatronics or a related field.
Very good software engineering knowledge in modern C++ (C++17 or newer).
Experience with Embedded Systems or hardware-related software.
Strong Linux development experience including multi-threaded applications, debugging, profiling, process and memory management, and performance optimization.
Experience in developing real-time or latency-sensitive applications.
Experience with DDS-based communication systems like FastDDS, Cyclone DDS, RTI Connext or comparable.
Experience in integrating software across complex systems including hardware, sensors, and controllers.
Practical experience with physical robots or robotics hardware platforms.
Experience in bring-up, integration, troubleshooting, or deployment of robotics systems on real hardware.
Very good understanding of software architecture, system integration and debugging in complex environments.
Experience in developing and implementing State Machines for operating and fault management workflows.
Familiarity with gRPC and Protocol Buffers.

Nice to have

Experience with humanoid robots, legged robots, mobile manipulators or other complex robotics systems.
Experience with robotics middleware and orchestration frameworks like ROS 2, Dora, Zenoh, DDS-native systems or proprietary platforms.
Familiarity with OROCOS RTT or other hard real-time robotics frameworks.
Experience in integrating software into high-frequency control systems with 500 Hz to 1 kHz.
Touchpoints with Locomotion, Balancing, Whole-Body Control, Manipulation or State-Estimation systems.
Knowledge in QoS-Tuning, distributed communication architectures and performance optimization of robotics middleware.
Experience with safety-critical systems, Fault-Tree Analysis (FTA), FMEA or safety-oriented software development.
Familiarity with Cross-Compilation, Embedded Linux, Virtualization and Deployment-Pipelines for robotics products.
Contributions to Open-Source projects in robotics software, middleware, infrastructure or embedded systems.

About the company

NEURA Robotics develops 4NE1, a cognitive humanoid robot designed to act safely and autonomously in real environments.