Senior Robotics Engineer - Manipulation (Boulder, CO)

PickNik Robotics is redefining the robotics industry with MoveIt Pro, a first-of-its-kind platform that combines AI and motion planning to make robots work in the real world.

Physical AI is reshaping the field: as vision-language-models (VLM) and vision-language-action (VLA) policies move from the lab into production, MoveIt Pro combines these learned approaches with robust, safety-aware planning and control so robots can responsibly and reliably perform real tasks. Built on over a decade of experience with companies like Google, Amazon, Samsung, BMW, Lockheed Martin, NASA, and leading startups, MoveIt Pro brings proven capabilities into production. Join us in helping companies deploy AI to robots quickly and effectively, unlocking new possibilities. This is a challenging, high-impact role with the opportunity to do some of the most rewarding work of your career.

As a Senior Robotics Engineer at PickNik Robotics, you'll be our go-to expert for getting robot arms to do real work in the real world. You'll own manipulation solutions built on MoveIt Pro (http://picknik.ai/pro) and driven by our customer's insights, who are domain experts in a wide range of commercial fields. To move these applications out of concept, through prototype, and into production, you’ll help select and integrate the surrounding hardware and drive the motion planning strategy until it executes the customer's task reliably and within cycle-time. You'll work directly with customers to take their toughest manipulation challenges from concept to deployment, on robots around the world (and in outer space!).

Am I a good fit?

• You love robotics and have a passion for creating the next generation of robot software

• Are excited to be part of a team of robotics experts

• Should work efficiently, be ready to learn, and have great attention to detail

• Desire to contribute to robotics projects solving big problems

• Ability to collaborate with teams around the world

Requirements

• Masters in Robotics, Computer Science, a related robotics-focused field, or equivalent industry experience

• 6+ years of professional work experience

• Experience with robot arm hardware integration, such as trajectory controller development and driver development for commercial hardware.

• Background in robot arm motion planning fundamentals: inverse kinematics, sampling based planning, optimization based planning, PID loops.

• Driven to ship reliable software used in production settings to solve hard problems robotics have never done before.

• Experience with C++17 (or newer) and familiarity with at least one scripting language, preferably Python.

• Be able to travel approximately every other month to customer sites & conferences. Less than 20% of the time.

• Live in the Boulder/Denver area and have the ability to be in-office at least 3 days per week.

Some preferred skills/experience:

• Previous projects involving ROS 2, MoveIt 2, Nav2, Mujoco, or other robotic libraries.

• Experience with multiple robot description formats, such as URDF and MJCF.

• Experience with ros2_control hardware interfaces for 500+ Hz drivers.

• Experience shipping and maintaining a software+hardware solution in production.

• Self driven experimentation with new AI workflows to work more effectively.

• Knowledge of processes to measure and tune communication middleware.

• Experience with full life-cycle library and application development, Git version control, software testing, and continuous integration.

Benefits:

• Health, Dental, and Vision insurance

• 401k Matching

• Paid time off

• Opportunity to share in the company’s success through equity

Minimum Salary

• The minimum salary for this position is $150,000/year.