Benefits
- Competitive compensation + meaningful equity
- Flexible vacation
- Comprehensive health benefits
- 401(k) plan
- Accelerated growth opportunities
- Free snacks from our robot chefs
The Role
Partnering closely with the CTO, the Chief Engineer is the senior technical leader responsible for the design, development, and delivery of Miso’s end-to-end automation software platform—including embedded systems, infrastructure, and cloud services that power Flippy.
You will define technical strategy, oversee software execution across multiple domains, and guide a high-performing engineering organization. This role requires deep technical expertise, sound engineering judgment, and the ability to drive complex automation products from concept through commercialization.
What You’ll Do
- Provide technical leadership and ownership across all software initiatives, ensuring architectural integrity, scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
- Lead and develop the engineering organization—setting standards, mentoring technical leaders, and fostering a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement.
- Establish and evolve the software development lifecycle, engineering best practices, coding standards, testing protocols, and release processes.
- Guide architecture and system design reviews, providing clear direction on tradeoffs, complexity reduction, and performance optimization.
- Oversee development of automation frameworks, embedded software, cloud-connected services, data systems, and core infrastructure.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with hardware engineering, product, and operations to ensure aligned priorities and achievable technical roadmaps.
- Drive execution in ambiguous environments, making strategic decisions that balance business needs, engineering rigor, and time-to-market.
- Ensure that technical documentation, testing artifacts, and validation tools meet commercial-grade quality standards.
- Champion a high-performing, collaborative engineering culture centered around problem-solving, transparency, and ownership.
- Work onsite in Pasadena to support close coordination with hardware, test labs, and manufacturing teams.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related field (advanced degree preferred).
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant leadership responsibility delivering commercial, production-grade automation or complex real-time systems.
- Strong proficiency with C++ and Python, and experience building general software frameworks, distributed systems, and cloud-connected applications.
- Demonstrated success managing and scaling high-performing engineering teams.
- Expertise with Linux, Git, CMake, Docker, databases, and modern development tooling.
- Deep understanding of algorithms, data structures, OOP, and system design patterns.
- Experience working with simulations, complex state machines, and/or event-driven architectures.
- Familiarity with SDLC best practices, agile methodologies, code review processes, and automated testing.
- Experience with ROS or similar middleware (preferred).
- Startup or high-growth company experience strongly preferred.
Compensation
$200-$230k Annually + Equity + Benefits
The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base salary range for candidates residing in the Los Angeles Metro area and excludes additional earnings such as bonus and benefits. If your salary requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply.
At Miso Robotics, we are committed to fostering an inclusive, diverse, and equitable workplace where every team member is valued and respected. We believe that diversity in our team drives innovation and creativity, which is why we strive to create a welcoming environment for everyone, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, or veteran status.
Top Skills
What We Do
Miso Robotics is building AI-powered automation for commercial kitchens, starting with Flippy, the industry's first fully autonomous fry station robot deployed at commercial scale. If you're an AI or robotics engineer who wants to see your work in action every single day, solving real problems for real people, this is where that happens.
We're tackling one of the hardest robotics challenges: unstructured environments. Restaurant kitchens are chaotic, unpredictable, and unforgiving. Orders surge randomly, equipment varies by location, and there's zero tolerance for downtime. Our robots work alongside humans in 350-degree heat, handling multiple tasks simultaneously while adapting in real time. It's computer vision, motion planning, and AI decision-making at the edge, all day, every day.
Our tech stack is cutting edge. We use NVIDIA AI for vision and inference, custom motion control algorithms, and machine learning models that continuously improve from real-world data across dozens of live deployments. The impact is immediate and measurable. When a restaurant operator tells us our robot "had their back" during a lunch rush, or a worker says Flippy is their "best friend," that's our mission in action.
Beyond Flippy, our Innovation Lab in Pasadena develops next-generation kitchen automation. We're expanding into new stations, new tasks, and new capabilities. The kitchen of the future needs engineers who can build systems that actually work when the stakes are high and the environment is hostile.
You'll work with a team that includes product leaders from Amazon and Ring, robotics engineers solving novel manipulation problems, and a CEO who gets that great technology means nothing if it breaks down during dinner rush. We obsess over real-world performance, not lab demos.
Why Work With Us
We're revolutionizing food service with AI robotics that solve real labor challenges. Join us to build cutting-edge technology that's already deployed in major chains, work with a mission-driven team backed by strong funding, and shape the future of an industry ripe for innovation.
Gallery
