We are seeking a Founding Communications Engineer to own the design and delivery of a low-latency, international communications framework that enables remote teleoperators to seamlessly control our robots and collect data in real time. This is a hands-on, high-impact role where you will work closely with our multidisciplinary team to build a truly exceptional, deployment ready, robot.
Location & Working Setup:
You must be willing to relocate to San Francisco by March 30 and work in-person from a shared live/work environment. We call it a hacker house. It’s a focused, high-output environment built around shipping. We can help with visas if you are from the UK or EU.
What you will own:
- Design and ship a global, low-latency communications stack for real-time robot teleoperation (control, video, depth, point clouds, telemetry).
- Select and justify transports/protocols using measured latency, reliability, and operational constraints.
- Implement resilience: congestion control, adaptive bitrate, loss recovery (FEC/retransmit), and regional failover.
- Ensure real-world connectivity: NAT traversal, TURN/STUN, edge/relay topology.
- Define serialization, timing, and synchronization for tight control loops and multi-sensor alignment.
- Instrument and benchmark end-to-end performance (latency, jitter, loss, tail metrics, budgets).
- Own security primitives: authentication, encryption, key management, secure tunnels.
- Debug distributed production failures and deploy fixes with minimal disruption.
- Work tightly with VR, controls, and hardware teams; maintain clear architecture and operational docs.
What we’re looking for:
- Strong focus on building excellent real-time communications systems.
- Proven experience shipping low-latency networking systems (teleop, live video, cloud gaming, or similar).
- Deep understanding of real-time transport (UDP, QUIC, RTP/RTCP, WebRTC, congestion control).
- Strong systems programming skills in C++.
- Hands-on experience with low-latency media pipelines and encoders (GPU/software).
- Experience operating global services and measuring region-to-region performance.
- Solid security fundamentals (TLS/mTLS, auth, key management).
Required:
- Portfolio of relevant work and projects (heavily weighted).
Desirable:
- Experience with ROS2 and bridging robot sensor data to external clients.
- Background in real-time systems or low-latency media for VR headsets or edge devices.
- Strong interest in robotics.
We move fast. If you meet the bar and can relocate by March 30, 2026, apply now.
