Head of Software Architecture, Embodied AI Platform

About the Role

This is a hands-on leadership role owning the end-to-end architecture of an agentic SaaS platform that manages and operates general-purpose humanoid robots at fleet scale. Reporting directly to the CTO, you will lay the foundational architecture while growing a software platform team from roughly 10 to 15+ engineers. The work sits at the intersection of distributed cloud systems, edge robotics, and AI, making it a rare opportunity to shape a platform from the ground up in a fast-moving robotics company.

What You'll Do

• Design and own the full platform architecture, spanning robot connectivity, fleet management, AI and agentic features, data pipelines, and model training workflows as one coherent system.

• Set technical direction across frontend, backend, robot-side, and infrastructure, making key architectural decisions as the team scales.

• Stay hands-on writing and reviewing production code, especially during early architecture phases where foundational abstractions are critical.

• Architect how AI agent capabilities, including conversational interfaces, agentic behaviors, and fleet-data learning loops, integrate safely into the platform with appropriate guardrails for physical robots.

• Grow and lead the software platform team, establishing engineering standards and architecture review processes.

What We're Looking For

• 10+ years of experience architecting and delivering SaaS platforms that manage or control physical hardware devices at scale.

• Demonstrated ability to design end-to-end distributed systems spanning edge devices, cloud infrastructure, and frontend layers.

• Staff or principal-level background at companies building hardware, IoT, connected devices, or fleet management systems.

• Hands-on proficiency with relevant protocols and patterns such as WebSockets, gRPC, pub/sub messaging, real-time communication, OTA updates, and edge-cloud architectures.

• Owned multi-team system architecture decisions and implementations, not just component-level contributions.

• Currently writes production code regularly as part of daily work, not solely design or documentation.

• Active use of AI tools and modern development practices in day-to-day workflow.

• A degree in Computer Science or a related technical field.

• Experience at an early-stage startup or as a first architecture hire leading infrastructure decisions is a strong plus.

• Familiarity building or integrating AI agentic systems, including tool use and multi-step planning workflows, is a plus.

• No visa sponsorship is available; candidates must be authorized to work in the United States.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary range: $250,000 to $400,000 USD annually, plus equity. No visa sponsorship is available.

Location

On-site in Santa Clara, California, USA. Candidates must be based in or willing to relocate to the Santa Clara area.