Covariant
Deployment Robotics Engineer
THE COMPANY
Our mission is to build the Covariant Brain, a universal AI to give robots the ability to see, reason and act on the world around them. Bringing AI from research in the lab to the infinite variability and constant change of our customer’s real-world operations requires new ideas, approaches and techniques.
Success in the real world requires a team that represents that world: diversity of backgrounds, points of view, and experiences. Our common denominator: ambitious expectations, love of learning, empathy for those around us, and a team-first mindset. Read more about our culture at https://www.keyvalues.com/covariant .
THE ROLE
Covariant deployment engineers implement our robotic solutions at warehouses across the US and around the world. They know our products’ nooks and crannies better than anyone and how to escape when we’ve accidentally fallen into one of the crannies. As we set up and test new robotic deployments, they are our first set of hands on the keyboard, making sure everything is configured correctly, from hardware to networks to software. As we start testing our robots, they act as chief debuggers, adjusting code and writing small features to improve our performance. They are also jacks-of-all-trades, not afraid to adjust the robotic hardware when necessary, and intimately familiar with how the hardware and software pieces of our product interact.
Areas of Focus
- Deployment: Set up new robots in the field and make sure they’re working as intended
- Model Performance: You’ll be adding training data to our neural nets to improve the performance of customers’ robots.
- Custom Solutions: You’ll write code to customize our solution to the particular customer challenge and environment.
You will
- Be a key contributor from day 1 on a small team that’s growing fast
- Push the boundary of possible with a world-class machine learning team
- See your work deployed immediately and affecting a customer’s performance the next day
Core requirements
- Desire to be hands-on with our robots in various locations (travel 50%-75%)
- Bachelor’s degree in a technical field, or extensive experience installing technical systems
- Proficiency in writing, reading, and understanding code. We work primarily in python, but the specific languages and frameworks you know are less important than your ability to learn new ones.
- Comfortable at the linux command line
- Handy with physical systems. Some hardware, electronics, robotics, or networking experience is nice, but building your own deck or plumbing system counts, too.
Nice to haves
- Past experience with robotics
- Experience with networking, electronics, optics/camera calibration, and Customer or client facing experience
- Familiarity with AWS and distributed computing
- Familiarity with github and the tools of professional software development
- Some experience building physical things. CAD design and/or fabrication experience appreciated.
SAMPLE WEEK IN THE LIFE
- Monday - Fly to the customer site to get started with your week. Meet up with the hardware deployment engineer, a technician, and the robot performance lead. Work with the team to get the measurements of the station into the layout file properly so that the robot knows where it is relative to the other parts of the station.
- Tuesday - Run an hour of product through the robot station, noting the performance and any failures or new corner cases. After you look at the debug images, you realize that one of the cameras could be miscalibrated. Redo the camera calibration routine.
- Wednesday - Train some of the warehouse technicians at the customer about how to operate the machine on their own, without supervision. One of them manages to get the system into an error state you’ve never seen. Dig into the logs, and submit a detailed bug to the application team. Have dinner with the team.
- Thursday - As the robot runs this morning, it drops a glass bottle, which shatters. After cleaning up and checking the robot, figure out what went wrong. Involve the planning and control team to make sure that it can’t happen again. Time to fly home.
- Friday - Take a few calls to plan for next month’s deployment at a new customer. You’re leading the charge to implement some new procedures for making the deployment process easier. Write up your proposal to get the team’s feedback. In the afternoon, set up a remote test of the software integration between Covariant’s application and the new customer’s warehouse management software.
BENEFITS
Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family
Unlimited time off Flexible work hours
Lunch and dinner each day
401(k) plan and match
At covariant.ai we don’t just accept difference—we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. Covariant.ai is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.
Robotics Engineer