Deployment Robotics Engineer (EU)

Covariant in Germany

THE COMPANY
Our mission is to build the Covariant Brain, a universal AI to give robots the ability to see, reason and act on the world around them. Bringing AI from research in the lab to the infinite variability and constant change of our customer’s real-world operations requires new ideas, approaches and techniques.

Success in the real world requires a team that represents that world: diversity of backgrounds, points of view, and experiences. Our common denominator: ambitious expectations, love of learning, empathy for those around us, and a team-first mindset.

THE ROLE
Covariant deployment engineers implement our robotic solutions at warehouses across the US and around the world.  They know the details of our product capabilities better than anyone and are master debuggers.  As we set up and test new robotic deployments, they are our first set of hands on the keyboard, making sure everything is configured correctly, from hardware to networks to software.  As we start testing our robots, they act as chief debuggers, adjusting code and writing small features to improve our performance.  They are also jack-of-all-trades, not afraid to adjust the robotic hardware when necessary, and intimately familiar with how the hardware and software pieces of our product interact.

This role will often require 5 days per week of on-site presence at our robotic deployments located across Europe, primarily in Germany.


COMPANY CORE VALUES
LEARNING CONSTANTLY
STRIVING FOR EMPATHY
TAKING ON THE IMPOSSIBLE, TOGETHER

BENEFITS
Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family
Unlimited PTO
Flexible work hours
401(k) plan and match (applies only to United States employees)
Lunch and dinner each day (for on-site employees)
Monthly Health & Wellness budget
Quarterly Learning budget

At covariant.ai we don’t just accept difference—we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products, and our community. Covariant.ai is proud to be an equal-opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status.
    • Curiosity - The role will require you to learn about our technology stack and how to operate it effectively
    • Teamwork - You will be the eyes and ears of the whole company while deployed - a strong ability to work with the rest of the team will be needed
    • Resilience - Onsite work never fully goes as planned and you will be expected to help your team through difficulties that may arise by contributing to the overall effort
    • Be a key contributor from day 1 on a small team that’s growing fast
    • Push the boundary of possibility with a world-class machine-learning team
    • See your work deployed immediately and affecting a customer’s performance the next day
    • Desire to be hands-on with our robots in various locations (travel 75%-100%)
    • Bachelor’s degree in a technical field, or extensive experience installing technical systems
    • Experience with the Linux command line and with writing, reading, and understanding code - we work primarily in Python, but the specific languages and frameworks you know are less important than your ability to learn new ones
    • Experience with physical systems - some hardware, electronics, robotics, or networking experience is nice, but working on your own passion project works too
    • Ability to speak German
    • Past experience with robotics, controls systems, or warehouse automation
    • Experience with networking, electronics, optics/camera calibration
    • Experience teaching or training customers or clients
    • Familiarity with GitHub and the tools of professional software development
    • CAD design and/or fabrication experience
    • Monday - Travel to the customer site to get started with your week.  Meet up with the hardware deployment engineer, a technician, and the robot performance lead.  Work with the team to get the measurements of the station into the layout file properly so that the robot knows where it is relative to the other parts of the station.
    • Tuesday - Run an hour of product through the robot station, noting the performance and any failures or new corner cases.  After you look at the debug images, you realize that one of the camera lenses is getting dirty, so perform a basic clean-up, and take the opportunity to check on the rest of the station. Add a section on lens cleaning to the operation manual distributed to customer maintenance staff.
    • Wednesday - Train some of the warehouse technicians about how to operate the machine on their own, without supervision.  One of them manages to get the system into an error state you’ve never seen.  Dig into the logs, and submit a detailed bug to the application team.  Have dinner with the team.
    • Thursday - Work with the engineering team to analyze the results of the last production run and implement changes to improve the robot's performance. Run another production batch to confirm the fix has helped.
    • Friday - Take a few calls to plan for next month’s deployment at a new customer.  You’re leading the charge to implement some new procedures for making the deployment process easier.  Write up your report on the overall health of the robot this week for the engineering team and travel back home for a well-deserved rest!
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