Systems Software Engineer - Cell Modeling

What to Expect

Dawn Industries builds software that watches industrial robot cells (PLC, robot, gripper, sensors), diagnoses faults with evidence an engineer can verify, and applies a fix only when a human approves it. You will own the model of the cell: the compilers that turn vendor engineering artifacts (controller programs, project exports, robot backups) into one structured, queryable representation, and the representation itself. Your output is what the AI layer reasons over, so its correctness and its provenance are the product's credibility.

We develop against real hardware in our own lab.

APPLICATION NOTE: No PLC, robotics, or manufacturing experience is required. Learning to read industrial programs deeply is part of the job.

What You'll Do

• The Big Picture: Build the compiler, and the representation it targets, for the programs that run the world's factories, compiled into one typed, queryable, provenance-carrying model that an AI can reason over.
• Format Parsing: Build parser front-ends for vendor engineering artifacts, each against real test projects: Siemens TIA Portal sources and Openness/SimaticML XML exports, Rockwell L5X/ACD, Mitsubishi GX Works projects, and robot controller backups (FANUC TP/LS listings, I/O configuration, registers, alarm history), with more robot languages to follow (ABB RAPID, KUKA KRL, URScript).
• Program Analysis: Parse and analyze IEC 61131-3 logic (SCL/ST text, LAD/FBD networks) to recover behavior: state machines and their transitions, fault raise and clear conditions, timers, guard expressions, and a complete read/write cross-reference.
• Representation Design: Own the schema: a typed graph of tags, steps, faults, interlocks, and cross-device handshakes that stays general across vendors.
• Deterministic Compilation: Keep builds byte-stable and re-runnable: canonical serialization, content-addressed versions, and diffs that distinguish a changed fact.
• Corpus Validation: Prove generality against a corpus of hundreds of real-world projects across the major PLC and robot ecosystems, and build the query surfaces downstream consumers, human and AI, use to interrogate the model.
• Domain Fluency: Become a strong reader of PLC and robot programs, and encode cell semantics (scan cycles, latching, edge triggers, handshake protocols) into the model rather than into tribal knowledge.

What You'll Bring

• Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of systems software engineering, or a portfolio that proves the same depth.
• Expert-level Python and real parser or compiler front-end experience: lexers and parsers, ASTs or IRs, graph data structures.
• Proven file-format reverse-engineering you can walk us through: a proprietary format you decoded and made legible.
• Data-modeling: schema design, closed vocabularies, versioning discipline, canonical serialization, content hashing.
• Not required: PLC, robotics, or manufacturing experience. Learning to read industrial programs deeply is part of the job.

Nice to Have

• You have worked on code intelligence at scale: cross-reference indexes, symbol graphs, code search, or the machinery behind an IDE's navigation.
• You have shipped a static analyzer, type checker, or compiler pass that found real bugs in other people's code.
• You have written a grammar, language server, or decompiler for a language.
• You have made a proprietary or abandoned format readable again: an office-document dialect, a game's asset files, a firmware image, a dead tool's project files.
• You have kept a large build hermetic: reproducible outputs and provenance you can audit.
• Familiarity with IEC 61131-3 environments (TIA Portal, Studio 5000, GX Works) or industrial robot controllers.