We are seeking a Founding Communications Engineer to own the design and delivery of a low-latency, international communications framework that enables remote teleoperators to seamlessly control our robots and collect data in real time. This is a hands-on, high-impact role where you will work closely with our multidisciplinary team to build a truly exceptional, deployment ready, robot. **Location & Working Setup:** You must be willing to relocate to San Francisco by March 30 and work in-person from a shared live/work environment.
We call it a hacker house. It’s a focused, high-output environment built around shipping. We can help with visas if you are from the UK or EU. **What you will own:** * Design and ship a global, low-latency communications stack for real-time robot teleoperation (control, video, depth, point clouds, telemetry). * Select and justify transports/protocols using measured latency, reliability, and operational constraints. * Implement resilience: congestion control, adaptive bitrate, loss recovery (FEC/retransmit), and regional failover. * Ensure real-world connectivity: NAT traversal, TURN/STUN, edge/relay topology. * Define serialization, timing, and synchronization for tight control loops and multi-sensor alignment. * Instrument and benchmark end-to-end performance (latency, jitter, loss, tail metrics, budgets). * Own security primitives: authentication, encryption, key management, secure tunnels. * Debug distributed production failures and deploy fixes with minimal disruption. * Work tightly with VR, controls, and hardware teams; maintain clear architecture and operational docs. **What we’re looking for:** * Strong focus on building excellent real-time communications systems. * Proven experience shipping low-latency networking systems (teleop, live video, cloud gaming, or similar). * Deep understanding of real-time transport (UDP, QUIC, RTP/RTCP, WebRTC, congestion control). * Strong systems programming skills in C++. * Hands-on experience with low-latency media pipelines and encoders (GPU/software). * Experience operating global services and measuring region-to-region performance. * Solid security fundamentals (TLS/mTLS, auth, key management). * Experience with observability, load testing, and defining SLIs/SLOs. * Excellent incident debugging and technical documentation. **Required:** * Portfolio of relevant work and projects (heavily weighted). **Desirable:** * Experience with ROS2 and bridging robot sensor data to external clients. * Background in real-time systems or low-latency media for VR headsets or edge devices. * Strong interest in robotics.
We move fast. If you meet the bar and can relocate by March 30, 2026, apply now.
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