Applications Engineer

Chef Robotics is on a mission to accelerate the advent of intelligent machines in the physical world. As the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT has shown, AI has the potential to drive immense change. However, we believe AI’s biggest impact will be in the physical world, given industries like manufacturing, food, and transportation represent 90% of global GDP. We're starting with food, with a goal to put an intelligent robot in every commercial kitchen in the world. We have signed multiple multi-year contracts with various large food companies and we are growing fast. We're backed by investors like Kleiner Perkins, Construct, Bloomberg BETA and Promus Ventures. We have a great team, where you will be surrounded by talented engineers and tech leaders from companies like Cruise, Zoox, Google, Verb Surgical, Tesla, Nuro, Vicarious, Amazon Robotics, Strateos, Built Robotics, Facebook, Plenty, Yelp, and Microsoft.

Chef is seeking Applications Engineers to serve as a vital link between our customers and our engineering teams. In this role, you’ll work in the field with new customers’ engineering and manufacturing teams to understand their unique processes, challenges, and goals and help translate those needs into actionable insights for Chef’s hardware, software, and product teams. This is an opportunity to use your deep technical expertise and passion for robotics while having a direct impact on our sales process and our revenue stream. In this role, you’ll be responsible for managing one of the core drivers of the company’s success: our relationships with our customers. If you’re excited about working in a customer-facing role on hard technical problems and you thrive in the fast-paced, dynamic environment of an early-stage startup, we’d love to hear from you. 

Please note that this is not a software applications engineering role. This is a customer facing role where you’ll be deployed at our customers’ facilities at least 50% of the time. 

Responsibilities

• Act as the face of Chef Robotics in the field, leading the in-field deployment of Chef’s systems at customer sites from engagement to site acceptance tests.
• Develop models and metrics to help build an ROI case by quantifying the manufacturing process improvements that the robots can achieve.
• Collaborate with Chef’s Engineering and Project Management teams to prioritize and collect customer feature requests and requirements.
• Work with Chef’s Sales and Business Development teams to help close customers by addressing feature requests, questions, technical risks, and getting overall buy-in from a technology perspective.
• Serve as a touchpoint for the customer to ensure they have a great experience with our team and our product.
• Prepare and develop technical presentations to explain our company's products or services to customers.

Requirements

• BS, MS, in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
• Minimum 3+ years experience in a customer-facing role in applications engineering, deployment, solutions engineering, or similar roles.
• Prior experience in two or more of the following areas: machine learning, motion planning, robotics, computer vision, or control.
• Prior experience with at least one of the following areas: product engineering, applications engineering, solutions engineering, sales engineering, or forward deployed engineering.
• Demonstrated track record of shipping products quickly and efficiently.
• Able to work independently and with minimal supervision.
• Ability to travel 50% of your time.
• Be available to work a flexible schedule to support customers, including some weekends, nights, and on-call hours.
• Familiar with Linux/Unix and/or Robot Operating System (ROS); Python or Linux experience is a plus.
• Strong communications and project management skills to recognize, communicate, and properly document product issues, complaints and improvements.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizen status, uniform service member and veteran status, marital status, age, pregnancy status, protected medical condition, genetic information, disability, or any other protected status.

Multiple studies have found that a higher percentage of women and BIPOC candidates won't apply if they don't meet every listed qualification. Chef values candidates of all backgrounds. If you find yourself excited by our mission but you don't check every box in the description, we encourage you to apply anyway!