The posting
Senior Systems Engineer - Robotics
About the Company Spacer Robotics is building autonomous, non-humanoid robotic systems to construct infrastructure in extreme environments. Our vision is to disrupt the $16 trillion global construction industry by pioneering a new Deep Tech philosophy that blends robotics, AI, and systems engineering at the frontier.
About the Role We're seeking a Senior Systems Engineer to be the person who makes sure all the moving parts of our robot: mechanical, electrical, software, perception, safety, actually work together as one coherent product, not just individually. Our first system is an autonomous rebar-tying robot operating on live construction sites. Every subsystem has to integrate correctly, hold up to dust and vibration and uneven terrain, and stay safe around real workers.
As a senior hire, you won't just execute the systems function, you'll define it. You'll set how we write requirements, manage interfaces, and assess risk as the team and the product scale, while staying hands-on enough to catch the integration issues that only show up when you're in the room with the hardware.
On-Site Requirement 5 days a week, on-site in the San Francisco Bay Area. The robot is here. Integration happens in the room.
What You'll Do
- Own system-level architecture across mechanical, electrical, and software domains - define how subsystems interface and where functional responsibility sits.
- Establish the systems engineering practice and set up the process for converting customer requirements to functional requirements.
- Write and maintain requirements and Interface Control Documents (ICDs) detailed enough to prevent integration surprises, lightweight enough not to slow the team down
- Lead trade studies (cost, performance, complexity, time-to-ship) and make the call when a multidisciplinary tradeoff needs a decision, not an endless debate
- Drive hazard analysis and risk assessment for a robot working around people on active job sites, safety isn't a checkbox here, it's the product
- Translate field data and deployment feedback into concrete design changes, you're often the first to spot that a "software bug" is actually a sensor mounting issue, or a "hardware problem" is actually a calibration assumption that broke in the field
- Lead design reviews and root-cause investigations, bringing a systems lens that catches what siloed reviews miss
- Be the connective tissue between engineering execution and business priorities, translate technical risk and tradeoffs for leadership in terms that inform roadmap and customer commitments
- Mentor other engineers on systems thinking as the team grows, even before you're formally managing anyone
Qualifications
- 5+ years of Systems Engineering experience in robotics, aerospace, automotive, heavy machinery, or similar multidisciplinary hardware/software systems
- Proven track record owning system-level integration and architecture, not contributing to one, but having driven one end-to-end
- Demonstrated experience being on the hook when subsystems didn't integrate cleanly, and changing how requirements or interfaces were written as a result
- Comfortable with setting up a systems engineering workflow and pragmatic enough to adapt them for a fast-moving startup.
- Expert-level requirements authoring, traceability management, and interface definition
- Working knowledge of relevant safety standards (ISO 13849, IEC 61508, ANSI/RIA R15.06, or similar) and what they actually require versus what's overkill at this stage
- Experience translating field/customer feedback into system design changes
- Clear communicator across audiences - engineers, leadership, and eventually customers or regulators
- A bias for action: you'd rather ship a v1 requirements doc and iterate than wait for perfect
- Comfortable building process from scratch in an environment where none exists yet
Preferred
- Experience with a physical robot deployed in a real-world environment (not just lab/sim)
- Familiarity with ROS/ROS2 system architectures
- Background bridging engineering and commercial/business functions, e.g., translating customer or investor conversations into technical priorities
- Experience from setting-up systems engineering practice at an early-stage company specifically (built the process, not just followed one)
Why Join Us You'll be the person who makes sure all the brilliant, fast-moving pieces of an early robotics company actually fit together, and that what gets built on the bench survives contact with a real construction site. This is a foundational, senior hire with outsized influence on how the company scales its engineering discipline from here.
Compensation The U.S. base salary for this full-time position ranges from $140,000 to $205,000, based on experience and qualifications. The compensation package is competitive and benchmarked against Bay Area senior-level market rates, and includes meaningful early-stage equity.
