Founding Communications Engineer

Apply on YC · Original job listing

• Role: Engineering / Robotics
• Experience: Any (new grads ok)
• Visa: US citizen/visa only
• Skills: C++, TCP/IP, Distributed Systems, Packaging

We are seeking a Founding Communications Engineer to own the design and delivery of a low-latency, international communications framework that enables remote teleoperators to seamlessly control our robots and collect data in real time. This is a hands-on, high-impact role where you will work closely with our multidisciplinary team to build a truly exceptional, deployment ready, robot.

Location & Working Setup:

You must be willing to relocate to San Francisco by March 30 and work in-person from a shared live/work environment. We call it a hacker house. It’s a focused, high-output environment built around shipping. We can help with visas if you are from the UK or EU.

What you will own:

• Design and ship a global, low-latency communications stack for real-time robot teleoperation (control, video, depth, point clouds, telemetry).
• Select and justify transports/protocols using measured latency, reliability, and operational constraints.
• Implement resilience: congestion control, adaptive bitrate, loss recovery (FEC/retransmit), and regional failover.
• Ensure real-world connectivity: NAT traversal, TURN/STUN, edge/relay topology.
• Define serialization, timing, and synchronization for tight control loops and multi-sensor alignment.
• Instrument and benchmark end-to-end performance (latency, jitter, loss, tail metrics, budgets).
• Own security primitives: authentication, encryption, key management, secure tunnels.
• Debug distributed production failures and deploy fixes with minimal disruption.