Senior Engineering Manager, Robotics Software

About the role

You will own the people leadership and technical direction of the robotics software stack that powers autonomous factory operations at Hadrian. This role requires you to manage a team of engineers responsible for perception, planning, behaviors, and collision avoidance in physical production environments. You will partner closely with hardware, controls, product, and operations to translate business priorities into a sequenced technical roadmap. A core part of your responsibility is building a hiring engine that can attract and evaluate top-tier robotics talent across specialized domains. You will continuously improve engineering practices, from design review and code review to testing, simulation, deployment, and on-call incident response. This is a people-first management position where your impact is measured through both team health and the autonomy of the robots you enable. If you are ready to lead high-stakes work that helps reindustrialize America, this role is for you.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Own the people leadership of your engineers: hiring, onboarding, mentorship, career growth, and performance.
• Build a hiring engine for robotics talent - define the bar, run a strong interview process, and help recruit a top-tier team across perception, planning, behaviors, and control.
• Ensure engineers are engaged, growing, and set up to do their best work; regularly assess team health and address issues before they become problems.
• Have real input into technical direction and where we invest headcount, in close partnership with the engineers and technical leads who drive architecture and design.
• Partner with Hardware, Controls, Product, and Operations to translate business priorities into a sequenced roadmap, and make sure the team is resourced and organized to deliver it.
• Continuously improve the team's engineering practices and developer lifecycle: planning, design review, code review, testing, simulation, deployment, on-call, and incident response.
• Provide clear expectations, direct feedback, and foster a strong sense of ownership among your engineers to maintain a healthy, high-performing team.
• Work comfortably in a fast-moving environment with high stakes, physical systems, and short iteration cycles.
• Guide technical tradeoffs in robotics concepts such as perception, planning, behaviors, control, and collision avoidance without needing to be the system architect.
• Support the development of the hardware abstraction layer that connects our software to the machines on the factory floor.

Requirements

• 5+ years of engineering management experience leading robotics, autonomy, or other complex technical teams in production.
• A genuine passion for people management - you care about your engineers' growth and happiness as much as you care about what the team ships.
• A track record of hiring and building strong technical teams, including for hard-to-fill or specialized roles.
• Technical fluency in robotics concepts (perception, planning, behaviors, control, collision avoidance) to have informed conversations about tradeoffs, evaluate technical leads' proposals, and contribute a useful point of view on direction and prioritization - without needing to be the architect yourself.
• Strong judgment on organizational design: how to structure a team, allocate headcount across projects, and balance depth vs. breadth as the stack grows.
• Excellent communication and cross-functional partnership skills - you can align engineers, technical leads, hardware/controls partners, and leadership.
• A track record of running a healthy

team: clear expectations, direct feedback, and a strong sense of ownership among your engineers.

• Comfortable working in a fast-moving environment with high stakes, physical systems, and short iteration cycles.
• M.S. in Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field.

Nice to have

• A track record of scaling a team through a period of fast headcount growth, including building out interview loops and onboarding from scratch.
• Experience mentoring engineers to grow into broader technical leadership roles.
• Experience managing engineers across multiple robotics disciplines (e.g., perception and planning).

Practical notes

Compensation details are included above. This role is full-time based in Los Angeles, California.