Robotics Software Engineer

Job description

Job Posting Title: Robotics Software Engineer ---- Hiring Department: Department of Computer Science ---- Position Open To: All Applicants ---- Weekly Scheduled Hours: 40 ---- FLSA Status: Exempt from FLSA ---- Earliest Start Date: Immediately ---- Position Duration: Expected to Continue ---- Location: UT MAIN CAMPUS ---- Job Details: General Notes The Center for Human and Robot Co-Adaptation (HRC) brings together six universities: The University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University Bloomington, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, University of Utah, and Yale University. Together, we study how people and robots can, do, and might adapt to one another over months and years as needs, skills, expectations, and social contexts change. The Center unites researchers across robotics, AI, cognitive science, social science, data, and ethics to establish a new science of human-robot co-adaptation. This science will be developed, tested, and refined through the Human Environment with Robots (HERO) Facility Network: long-term deployments of assistive robots in real-world settings including student dorms, cafés, museums, homes, hospitals, and assisted-living facilities. The Center is supported by a five-year, $30 million award from the National Science Foundation through its Science and Technology Centers (STC) program. Purpose The Center Robotics Software Engineer will develop, integrate, maintain, and deploy the common robotics software infrastructure that supports HERO deployments and foundational Center research. This position will create a standardized software stack that can support multiple robotic platforms and deployment sites, while providing researchers across the Center with reliable interfaces for developing, integrating, testing, and deploying new capabilities. The successful candidate will be a strong software engineer with experience building and debugging complex robotic systems. They will work across research and engineering teams to translate rapidly evolving research software into robust deployable systems, while maintaining the testing, configuration, monitoring, and deployment infrastructure needed for long-running real-world robot operation. The engineer will be expected to take ownership of the Center's shared robotics software infrastructure, establish sound software engineering practices, and develop safeguards that allow new capabilities to be integrated without compromising the reliability of ongoing HERO deployments. The Robotics Software Engineer will work closely with the Robotics Hardware Engineer to coordinate platform integration, deployment readiness, troubleshooting, and upgrades across the Center’s robotic systems. Responsibilities Center Robotics Software Platform Ownership and Standardization • Own the architecture, integration, operational readiness, and maintenance of the Center's common robotics software stack. • Develop and maintain standardized software interfaces and configurations that support multiple robot platforms and can be replicated across HERO sites. • Establish common abstractions and interfaces for robot capabilities, sensing, communication, data collection, monitoring, and other shared functionality. • Evaluate new robotics software frameworks, libraries, models, and supporting technologies and recommend their adoption when appropriate. • Coordinate closely with Center researchers and the Center Robotics Hardware Engineer to ensure that the software infrastructure supports the scientific and operational goals of the Center. Research Software Integration and Robotics Systems Engineering • Work with research teams across the Center to integrate new algorithms and capabilities into deployable robotic systems. • Develop and maintain ROS 2 packages, interfaces, launch systems, configuration infrastructure, and supporting software needed to connect research components into complete robotic applications. • Independently diagnose and resolve complex software failures spanning application code, middleware, operating systems, networking, drivers, dependencies, distributed computing, and hardware/software interfaces. • Design software architectures that allow experimental research components to evolve while maintaining stable interfaces and reliable operation of the overall system. • Support integration of computationally intensive capabilities, including perception, machine learning, foundation models, planning, and other AI systems running locally or on remote computing resources. Reliability, Testing, and HERO Software Operations • Maintain the Center robotics software stack in a reliable and continuously deployable state. • Develop automated testing, continuous integration, simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, monitoring, and validation systems to identify problems before deployment. • Establish staged deployment procedures, including simulation and digital-twin testing, local validation, canary deployments, and controlled rollout to HERO sites. • Develop logging, diagnostics, health monitoring, fault detection, and recovery mechanisms for long-running robot deployments. • Establish repeatable procedures for software installation, configuration, deployment, update, rollback, recovery, and validation. • Support diagnosis and resolution of software issues during HERO studies and deployments. Multi-Site Software Deployment and Technical Coordination • Maintain common source repositories, software releases, configuration records, documentation, and deployment procedures for use across HERO sites. • Support replication and validation of the Center software stack across robot platforms and participating institutions. • Maintain configuration and version control across deployed systems while accommodating necessary site- and platform-specific differences. • Coordinate software releases and upgrades across sites to minimize fragmentation and maintain interoperability. • Work with researchers and local technical personnel to trouble