Networking Engineer for Robotics - San Francisco

Overview:

Polymath Robotics is creating software that can safely control all of the world's industrial vehicles, and we’re looking for a Network Engineer/DevOps person to join our team. We’re a small, close-knit group of roughly 20 people, each of us experts in our fields, working to bring autonomous vehicles to various industries quickly. We believe robotics and autonomy are at a tipping point, similar to how the PC industry reshaped the world in the 80s, and we need your help. Founded by Stefan Seltz-Axmacher (Founder of Starsky Robotics) and Ilia Baranov (Clearpath Robotics, Amazon Astro), we are building the autonomy stack we wish we had at our previous companies.

Most of our robots don’t live in a clean Wi-Fi world — they’re on farms, construction sites, and mines. We need someone to own the connectivity stack that keeps those robots online and communicating with our cloud services. As a Networking Engineer, you’ll build, troubleshoot, and scale the network layer that ties our systems together, both on the robot, and off the robot.

Responsibilities:

• Own the networking reliability SLA for our global fleet, across edge devices and cloud systems.
• Build and manage connectivity solutions including VPNs, NAT traversal, LAN/WAN segregation, and cellular-based links.
• Develop tools and automation to simplify setup, provisioning, and troubleshooting.
• Ensure secure connectivity across variable and lossy environments.
• Collaborate with infrastructure and software teams to embed networking reliability into deployments.
• Create network monitoring dashboards and alerting for field systems.
• Document and continuously improve networking best practices for internal and field use.
• Recommend hardware and software solutions for internal teams, integration partners, and clients.

Qualifications:

• 3–5 years of experience in network engineering or systems administration.
• Strong understanding of TCP/UDP, routing, NATs, VPNs, DNS, and firewalls.
• Familiarity with Linux networking tools (iptables, nftables, systemd-networkd, netplan, etc).
• Experience with cellular and low-bandwidth communication setups a major plus.
• Ability to automate network configuration and testing (Python, Bash, etc).
• Strong debugging skills across both cloud and edge systems.
• Comfortable bridging software and hardware realities.
• Familiarity with Peplink hardware in particular is a nice to have.

Why Join Polymath Robotics?

• Collaborative Environment: Work alongside fantastic team members on collaborative projects
• Hybrid Workplace: Enjoy the flexibility of a hybrid work model, with engineering based in our SF Mission office three days a week, giving a good balance of maker time and synchronization time.
• Open Source Advocacy: We strongly support open-source robotics efforts, allowing your work to be shareable and publishable whenever possible.
• Humor & Passion: We might occasionally be a bunch of rosbags, but our passion and humor drive us to accelerate the realization of autonomous vehicles in the industry.
• In your first 90 days, you will be troubleshooting and deploying to our robot fleets worldwide, improving both inter and intra vehicle data exchange, and defining the architecture of our vehicle network autoconfiguration system. Our vehicles generate 10s of GB / minute.

Application Process:

Interested candidates are invited to submit their resume, and any relevant portfolio or project links. A cover letter is optional, but always appreciated.

Polymath Robotics is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We don’t look for a “cultural fit”, we look for people who add to the culture.

Interview Process

Ideally we want to get through this process in 1 week, 2 worst case:

1. Intro call - 30 mins on Zoom
2. Technical Interview - 1 hr on Zoom or in person
3. Team Meet & Great - 1 hr in person, usually around lunch
   • Can be combined with Technical Interview
4. Founders Call - 30 mins on Zoom or in person