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.
Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
