# Tech Lead, Robotics Runtime & Middleware at Mind Robotics

- Company: Mind Robotics
- What the company does: Mind Robotics builds intelligent, broadly capable robots for industrial deployment in high-impact environments. Backed by Accel, Kleiner Perkins and a16z.
- Company website: https://www.mindrobotics.com/
- Type: Startups (AI role)
- Level: Senior
- Location: Palo Alto
- Work setup: On-site
- Posted: 2026-09-08
- Apply by: 2026-10-23
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/mindrobotics/8a3bfa7a-ac9d-4e53-bc00-d8ccf4b544ea
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/mind-robotics-tech-lead-robotics-runtime-and-middleware/

## About the role

At Mind Robotics, we're building generalized physical AI — robotic systems capable of dexterous, adaptive, and reasoning-intensive work in real-world industrial environments. That depends on a runtime platform that lets robots perceive, decide, and act under hard real-time constraints.

## What they're looking for

- Strong systems programming in Python and/or Rust
- Hands-on experience with robotics middleware — ROS2 (rclcpp/rclpy, DDS implementations like Fast DDS/CycloneDDS, or Zenoh), including designing custom message types, QoS tuning, and multi-node communication patterns
- Real-time systems experience: understanding of scheduling, latency budgets, jitter, and the difference between soft and hard real-time guarantees, comfort with RTOS concepts
- Experience with embedded/edge Linux — cross-compilation, device driver basics, and resource-constrained execution (CPU/memory/power budgets)
- Multi-sensor synchronization: time sync protocols (PTP/gPTP), sensor fusion pipelines, and handling clock drift/skew across distributed compute on a single robot
- Experience with control systems and motion primitives — enough to reason about how software architecture decisions (message latency, action chunking, control frequency) affect closed-loop robot behavior

Tags: Software Engineering