Head of Software Architecture, Embodied AI Platform
Santa Clara County, CA - USA
Job Summary
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 computing and physical AI making it one of the most technically ambitious roles in the embodied AI space today.
- 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 phases where foundational abstractions are critical.
- Architect how AI agent capabilities (chatbots agentic behaviors fleet data learning) integrate safely into the platform with proper guardrails for physical robots.
- Grow and lead the software platform team establishing engineering standards and architecture review processes.
- 8 years of experience in software architecture with staff or principal-level scope at a company involving hardware IoT or connected-device systems.
- Proven ability to design end-to-end platform architectures spanning edge cloud and frontend (think hardware-software ecosystems in automotive smart home or similar domains).
- Hands-on coding ability: you write production code regularly not just design documents.
- Strong command of distributed systems and real-time communication patterns such as WebSockets gRPC and pub/sub messaging.
- Experience with data pipelines OTA update systems and fleet management at scale.
- Familiarity with AI agentic systems including tool use multi-step planning and chatbot integration.
- Strong CS fundamentals from a relevant technical degree.
- Prior startup or early-stage experience as a first architecture hire or early engineering leader is a plus.
- No visa sponsorship is available for this role; candidates must be authorized to work in the US.
Base salary range: $250000 to $400000 USD annually. Equity participation is expected at this seniority level. No visa sponsorship is available.
On-site in Santa Clara California USA. Candidates must be based in or willing to relocate to the Santa Clara area.