Senior Software Lead, Factory Operating System

Department: Engineering

Location: San Francisco

Employment Type: FullTime

About Us

Foundry Robotics is building an AI-first, assembly-focused contract manufacturer—software-defined manufacturing where robots and humans execute real production work.

Our wedge isn’t just “models.” It’s the software layer that turns:

• Orders → Schedules

• Schedules → Work instructions

• Work → Telemetry

• Telemetry → Continuously improving throughput, quality, and cost

This role is not robotics engineering. It is for senior software engineers who build the cloud + on-prem systems that run the factory, and the data backbone that makes those systems observable, reliable, and scalable.

We are also hiring Robotics Research Engineers separately—this is a different role.

The Role

We are hiring a Senior Software Engineer (IC) to build the backend systems and infrastructure that power the factory of the future.

You will design and implement:

• Cloud-based backend systems

• On-prem factory services

• Embedded-to-cloud data flows

• Petabyte-scale visual data pipelines

• Machine learning infrastructure across multiple compute environments

You will build production systems that stay online when factories are noisy, connectivity is imperfect, and downtime costs real money.

This is a hands-on engineering role. You will ship.

Key Responsibilities

• Cloud + On-Prem Architecture

  • Build and maintain a cloud-based backend for planning, scheduling, execution, inventory, traceability, and telemetry

  • Design multi-compute environment architectures spanning embedded, on-prem, and cloud systems

  • Implement infrastructure-as-code using Terraform

  • Ensure secure, reliable data movement between factory floor and cloud

  ML Infrastructure & Data Systems

  • Build PB-scale visual data pipelines for ingesting, curating, indexing, and preparing manufacturing data

  • Design container orchestration and microservices architectures for ML infrastructure

  • Enable fine-tuning workflows and model deployment across hybrid compute environments

  • Implement workflow orchestration and data lifecycle management

  Reliability + Production Systems

  • Design systems that tolerate intermittent connectivity and degraded network modes

  • Build observability: metrics, logging, tracing, runbooks

  • Make pragmatic tradeoffs between correctness, speed, and maintainability

  • Maintain high uptime in industrial production environments

  Full-Stack Execution (When Needed)

  • Implement APIs, services, database schemas, event-driven systems

  • Contribute to operator-facing tools and internal dashboards

  • Ship production-grade systems end-to-end

What We’re Looking For

• 3–6 years building and shipping real production software

• Deep experience in backend systems and infrastructure, hybrid cloud + edge experience, infrastructure and DevOps, OR data at scale

• Comfortable operating independently and owning complex systems end-to-end

• Comfortable working at large scale (terabytes → petabytes)

Nice to Have

• Experience supporting machine learning infrastructure in production

• Experience in manufacturing, robotics, or industrial systems

• Ability to obtain a government security clearance

• Experience working on projects related to the Department of Defense (DoD)

Growth Opportunities

• Help define the software backbone of an AI-native factory

• Work across robotics, ML infrastructure, and industrial systems

• Grow into larger technical ownership over time

• Influence architecture and long-term system design

Why Join Us?

This is one of the only places where world-class manufacturing executives, mechanical engineers, robotics researchers, and software engineers sit in the same room building production systems together.

We are focused on reinventing manufacturing to be localized, autonomous, and software-defined.