Senior Software Engineer - Robot Data Collection
Welo Data Santa Clara, California, United States · $218K/yr
Translation and Localization · 1,001-5,000 employees
About the role
You will design, build, and maintain the software infrastructure for robot data collection, including teleoperation stacks and data pipelines. Additionally, you will direct a team of teleoperators and ensure fleet reliability through sensor integration and root-cause analysis.
What they look for
Requirements
Candidates must have a degree in CS, Robotics, or a related field and at least 3 years of experience building software for real robot systems. Proficiency in Python, Linux, and robot middleware like ROS 2 is essential, along with experience in fleet administration and hardware integration.
Full description
Role Overview
We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to own the systems that power a large-scale data collection operation, including the collection platform, operator tooling, data pipeline, and fleet infrastructure.
This is an engineering role. Day-to-day teleoperation is performed by a dedicated operator team that you direct — you build what they run on, and you own what comes out of it.
Project Details
- Location: 100% Onsite (Santa Clara, CA, US)
- Employment: Full-time W-2, Monday–Friday, 9:00 AM–5:00 PM
- Start Date: ASAP
- Contract Duration: 12-month contract with possibility of extension
- Rate: $105/hour
What You'll Do
- Design, build, and maintain the software behind our data collection stations — teleoperation stack, multi-camera recording, and session tooling.
- Deploy and upgrade that stack across the fleet without stopping collection; keep workstations, containers, and networking healthy.
- Own the data pipeline end to end: automated validation, conversion into our dataset format, upload, metadata, and versioning.
- Build the QA tooling that catches dropped frames, stream desync, bad calibration, and mislabeled episodes before data reaches training.
- Direct a team of teleoperators — define task protocols and SOPs, onboard them on new tasks and embodiments, review session quality, and unblock them daily.
- Own fleet reliability: calibration and firmware pipelines, sensor and end-effector integration, root-cause analysis of recurring faults, and vendor escalation.
- Bring up new stations and new embodiments; report throughput, yield, and data health to the research team.
What we need to see
- MS in CS, Robotics, EE/ME, or a related field (or BS with equivalent hands-on experience).
- 3+ years building software for real robot systems — not simulation only.
- A system you designed and shipped that other people depended on daily, and that you kept running.
- Strong Python and Linux; Docker, git, CI, and SSH-based fleet administration.
- Robot middleware and real-time multi-sensor recording — ROS 2 or equivalent vendor SDKs.
- Experience supporting a data collection or teleoperation operation: you have built the tools operators depend on and owned throughput and quality numbers.
- Comfortable around robot hardware — arms or humanoids, dexterous hands, RGB-D cameras, and the calibration that keeps them honest.
- Able to lead operators without formal authority: you write clear SOPs, train people, and communicate status without being asked.
Ways to stand out from the crowd
- Humanoid or bimanual platforms (Unitree, Fourier, ALOHA/ARX-class rigs) and dexterous hands.
- XR teleoperation: Quest / PICO / Vision Pro, motion-capture gloves, whole-body retargeting.
- Imitation-learning data tooling — LeRobot, HDF5/Zarr episode stores, dataset versioning, S3 at TB–PB scale.
- Built internal dashboards or tooling for a production line or high-throughput lab.
- Open-source contributions to robotics data or teleoperation tooling.
