The posting
Instawork is on a mission to create meaningful economic opportunities for skilled hourly professionals in communities around the globe. Our AI-powered labor marketplace helps local businesses scale, and enables global technology companies to push the frontiers of robotics and AI. Backed by world-class investors like Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock, Y Combinator, and others, we’re looking for exceptional talent to reimagine the way the world works.
About IRL (Instawork Robotics Labs)
Researchers at UC Berkeley have identified a “100,000-year data gap” - the gulf between what trained AI language models and what physical robots actually have to learn from. Closing that gap is the defining infrastructure challenge of the physical AI era. IRL is Instawork’s answer to it. We deploy skilled workers into real commercial and residential environments - kitchens, warehouses, hotel floors, homes - to capture the high-fidelity task data that the world’s leading Robotics labs use to train their foundation models. Read more here.
We are seeking an Engineering Manager – Instawork Robotics to lead and grow a high-performing engineering team building the core video and data platform behind Instawork Robotics, at the intersection of robotics, AI, and the future of work. You will be responsible for driving technical execution from concept to production, partnering closely with Engineering, Operations, Product, and Business teams to translate customer and business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
You’ll combine strong software engineering expertise with people leadership—guiding architecture and technical decisions, mentoring engineers. You’ll work across areas such as distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, observability, and high-throughput data workflows, supporting a platform already processing 50+ PB of data and 600K+ hours of video, and scaling fast across multiple clouds.
You are someone who thrives in ambiguous and fast-moving environments, is proactive and hands-on when needed, and has strong product and business instincts. You’ll play a key role in shaping both the technology and engineering culture at Instawork Robotics.
What You’ll Do
- Lead, mentor, and develop a team of 5+ engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous learning.
- Drive technical execution across the full software development lifecycle, from architecture and design to production.
- Partner closely with Product, Operations, Robotics, and Business teams to translate customer and business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
- Drive initiatives across Ops, QA, ML, and platform teams: keep context across workstreams, track progress, and make sure work lands.
- Stay hands-on (about 20% of your time) and contribute to architecture, design reviews, technical discussions, and complex engineering problems.
- Partner with ML teams on data quality, throughput, and the formats models train on.
- Build and scale engineering teams through proactive hiring, interviewing, onboarding, and talent development.
- Identify and develop strong engineering talent through regular feedback, coaching, and career development.
- Establish strong engineering practices around code quality, system reliability, observability, and operational excellence.
- Protect the team’s focus: set priorities, push back on unplanned requests, and keep delivery commitments.
- Help shape the engineering culture and technical direction as Instawork Robotics continues to scale.
- Technical Mentorship: Act as a technical pillar for the team. Earn the respect of staff engineers and guide mid- and senior-level engineers through code reviews, pair programming, and architectural discussions to raise the bar for engineering excellence.
What We’re Looking For
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years in engineering management or people leadership.
- Deep backend and distributed-systems background, with range across the stack, including frontend and ML infrastructure.
- Experience running Kubernetes in production, ideally across more than one cloud, with an eye on storage and compute cost.
- Proven experience managing and mentoring engineering teams and building high-performing teams from the ground up or at scale.
- Strong track record of hiring and building engineering teams, including sourcing, interviewing, and closing strong technical talent.
- Strong technical depth with the ability to engage in architecture and system design discussions and make sound technical decisions.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work across Engineering, Product, Operations, Robotics, and Business teams.
- An AI-first mindset and experience with data-intensive systems such as video, computer vision, or ML training data. Robotics experience is a plus.
- You thrive in ambiguous, fast-paced, 0-1 environments. You act like an owner, practice high-velocity decision-making, and know how to ship product quickly without sacrificing quality.
Our Values
- Empathy, Trust & Candor We put ourselves in the shoes of our colleagues and customers and don’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations, instead building trust through honest and direct feedback.
- Bias for Action We practice high-velocity decision-making, clear-eyed that we often operate with incomplete information. Growing quickly means it’s OK to be wrong, so long as we learn from our mistakes and course correct!
- Always Be Learning We’re a curious bunch, and with AI transforming our workplace we encourage everyone to learn from each other, compounding our knowledge and experience to help us change an entire industry.
- Act Like an Owner We work long, hard, and smart, building products that delight our users and drive growth. Your ability to impact Instawork is limited only by your courage and conviction, not your job description.
About Instawork
Founded in 2015, Instawork is the nation’s leading online labor marketplace for food services, hospitality, light industry, and logistics, connecting more than 7M skilled workers with local restaurants, hotels, warehouses, stadiums, and more. Our AI-powered platform serves thousands of businesses across more than 50 major markets in the United States and Canada. We're not just helping fill shifts, we're supporting local economies—and we're just getting started!
Instawork has been featured by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Forbes included us on their Next Billion Dollar Startups list; RetailTech Breakthrough named us Workforce Hiring Solution of the Year for 2025; and Inc. 5000 recognized us as one of the country's top 10% fastest-growing companies two years in a row. But what matters most is our impact. We're solving real problems for real people, and we’re doing it at scale.
Join our team to help us build something that matters! We’re looking for superstars who want to help us shape the future of work. With hubs in San Francisco, Bangalore, and Chicago, city offices in New York, Phoenix, and Singapore, we're back to working together in-person five days a week because we believe the best ideas happen when great people collaborate face-to-face. We also value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.
Ready to make an impact? Learn more at www.instawork.com/about.
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