{"id":4054560,"url":"https://alion.io/job/gram-robotics-software-lead","title":"Robotics Software Lead","company":{"id":673569,"name":"GRAM","domain":"gram.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/gram-3","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"Robotics","role_family":"Robotics","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Palo Alto, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"ROS","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"Zenoh","optional":false},{"name":"EtherCAT","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-10T23:44:15Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-10","last_verified_at":"2026-11-11T03:59:47Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Robotics Software Lead\nGRAM, Los Angeles moving to the San Francisco Bay Area\nAbout the company\nGRAM is building a standalone, legged robot for critical infrastructure, with utilities as the initial focus. The locomotion policy is trained in simulation, and the engineering team today is hardware heavy and software light: mechanical and electromagnetics, electrical and power distribution, prototyping and chassis, and engineering leadership.\nThe role\nYou will be the architect of the full onboard software stack and the central node of the system. You own the message passing architecture, the middleware and the real time performance, so that every module (perception, controls, planning and drivers) communicates at the right speed with no latency surprises. You are not expected to own locomotion, perception or controls directly.\nThis is a hands on role, you report to the Head of Engineering, start as an individual contributor, and have a path to build a team as the company scales.\nWhat you will do\nOwn the onboard software architecture: how perception, estimation, planning and control fit together and communicate.\nOwn real time performance across the stack, with latency and jitter budgets for every loop that touches hardware, and find where cycle time is being lost.\nDefine and own the middleware layer and time synchronization across sensors and compute. The team is leaning towards Zenoh over DDS and is migrating its middleware.\nPartition workloads across CPU, GPU and microcontrollers so safety critical loops stay isolated from autonomy and AI.\nLead the upgrade of the current ROS stack to a supported release and define a modular architecture across all software layers.\nBuild the logging and replay tooling used to debug field runs.\nWhat you bring\nReal production experience with pub/sub middleware, Zenoh or DDS.\n8+ years experience\nReal time OS experience, including profiling, tracing and latency analysis.\nA solid understanding of concurrency and inter process communication, including memory management.\nStrong C++ and working knowledge of Python. Rust is a bonus.\nYou have designed the software architecture of a robot or a similar real time system and carried it through to production or field deployment.\nNice to have\nExperience with legged, humanoid or other mobile robots, ideally standalone and battery powered rather than fixed arm.\nEtherCAT or other fieldbus implementations.\nGPU platforms such as NVIDIA Jetson and onboard AI inference runtimes.\nA mechatronics to software background with real time systems deployed in production.\nExperience from autonomous vehicles, aerospace or drones where real time architecture is a core discipline.\nWhy join\nA clean slate architecture, with the freedom to build things properly from scratch.\nEarly equity, included in the package.\nThe chance to own a domain and build a team around it.\nA small, hands on team where everyone does real work \nInterview process\nRecruiter screen\nHiring manager screen with the Head of Engineering.\nOne to two technical rounds, including a live coding exercise and an architecture discussion. \nOnsite Interview","description_format":"text","description_chars":3113,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Robotics AI","Robotic Software & Control Systems"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-11T03:59:47Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:1","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-11T05:49:22Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/gram-robotics-software-lead","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/gram-robotics-software-lead.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-11T07:27:03Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":11338,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-12T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":673569},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=673569"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fgram-robotics-software-lead"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fgram-robotics-software-lead"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fgram-robotics-software-lead"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/gram-robotics-software-lead\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fgram-robotics-software-lead"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":4054560}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"gram.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":4054560},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. Docs: https://alion.io/developers"}}