Founding Robotics Software Engineer

1 day ago

San Francisco, California, United States Kovari Industries Full time

About Kovari Industries

At Kovari, we're rethinking how physical work gets done in the age of robotics. We believe that robots capable of valuable, real-world labor are the new foundation for global prosperity.

Our company is developing general-purpose robots designed to take on the physical, repetitive work that keeps hotels running, starting with housekeeping and core hospitality workflows. By mastering this tractable domain, we're building the foundation for robots that will support an ever-expanding range of physical work.

Founded in San Francisco, Kovari is obsessed with rapid iteration, engineering rigor, and deploying real machines into real environments. The next decade will compress a century of progress in robotics, and we're looking for people who want to leave their fingerprints on that future.

About This Role

We're seeking a
founding robotics software engineer
to join our team and help build our robotics platform from the ground up. As a founding robotics software engineer, you'll work across the stack to address key technical risks and help implement our product roadmap.

What You'll Do

  • Integrate
    vision–language–action (VLA) models
    into a custom robot with a unique drivetrain, elevator, and dual-arm system.
  • Build
    adapter layers and policy wrappers
    that translate VLA outputs into safe, reliable robot control.
  • Collaborate with controls engineers on
    IK, servo policies, and motion planning
    .
  • Build
    end-to-end data pipelines
    (ROS 2 bags → synchronized observations/actions → tf-aligned training data).
  • Design
    dataset curation, labeling, and augmentation
    workflows for fine-tuning.
  • Fine-tune VLAs using
    behavior cloning, offline RL, and preference optimization
    .
  • Develop
    simulation or synthetic data tools
    to accelerate training and cover edge cases.
  • Define core metrics for
    success rate, latency, safety, and sim-to-real performance
    .
  • Build tools for
    failure analysis
    (counterfactual replays, saliency inspection, etc.).
  • Iterate quickly using
    real-world telemetry
    from deployed robots.

What You Bring

  • Strong programming skills in
    C++
    ,
    Python
    , and
    ROS
    .
  • Experience with
    motion planning, controls, and manipulation
    .
  • Background in
    computer vision and ML for robotics
    .
  • Familiarity with
    TF trees, SLAM, perception, and multi-sensor fusion
    .

Bonus Points

  • Experience solving
    sim-to-real
    challenges for ML-driven robots.
  • Ability to debug complex
    tf2
    setups.
  • Deep knowledge of
    ROS 2
    conventions (frames, joint states, safety patterns).
  • Built dataset pipelines (ros2 bag → tf-aligned tensors → model fine-tuning).
  • Integrated
    custom sensors
    or written
    ros2_control
    drivers.
  • Experience with
    SLAM, state estimation, or calibration
    .
  • Knowledge of hardware interfaces (BLDC motors, CAN FD, IMUs, encoders, etc.).

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