Founding Roboticist

Conduit has built the system of record for the modern factory floor. We move manufacturers from one-off automation projects to holistic production systems where robots, machines, operators, sensors, and factory software synchronize. We are live with top manufacturers, are well capitalized, and are growing quickly. We are hiring our founding roboticist: an experienced engineer with a propensity for leadership, and who has the real robotics experience to back it up.

The Role

This is a founding role for an engineer who moves fast, takes ownership of everything they touch, and has the robotics chops to deserve that ownership. You have spent meaningful time deploying robots, debugging cells, training policies, and shipping into real production environments. You also operate at the pace of a founder: short cycles, blunt prioritization, willingness to make calls and own the consequences.

You will partner closely with the founders, help set the technical direction for the robotics side of Conduit, and personally ship the platform pieces that determine how fast we can deploy the next fifty cells. The role rewards urgency, taste, and end-to-end ownership over specialization.

What You’ll Do

• Move fast on the robotics platform. Decide what we build, what we buy, and what we adapt from open source, and then build it this week.
• Refactor off-the-shelf hardware to best serve Conduit and our customers.
• Drive timelines forward, driving forth an ambitious iteration velocity that your team is eager to contribute to.
• Bring AI-native judgment to the stack. You do not need to be the foundation-model expert in the room, but you must know enough to call the right shots about where modern ML belongs and where it does not.
• Hire and mentor the next robotics engineers as the team grows. Set the bar for both depth and urgency.

Who You Are

• 5 years of hands-on robotics work that includes real production deployments. Factory, warehouse, AV, aerospace, defense.
• Founder-grade urgency. Past evidence required: a project you led or startup you founded/early employee, a team you led through a hard launch, a project that visibly moved because you were on it.
• You span the stack. Not necessarily the deepest in any one layer, but credible across software, controls, perception, and modern ML, and you can hold the whole package in your head.
• You write production code in Python and ideally C .
• You are AI-native enough to not be intimidated by VLAs, learned policies, or modern perception, and pragmatic enough to use a PID when that is what is called for.
• You are able to be decisive under pressure with incomplete information.
• You want a founding seat.
• You want to be a part of the reindustrialization of the United States.

Nice to Have

• Prior experience as a founder, founding engineer, or first-five engineer at a robotics, automation, AV, or industrial-tech company.
• Background in mechanical, electrical, or controls engineering on top of software.
• Experience commissioning robots in regulated or safety-critical environments.
• A track record of building internal tools that other engineers actually use.

Why Conduit

Conduit is where research depth turns into customer impact in weeks. If that is the kind of velocity you have been waiting for, this is the seat.

• Top tier pay and equity: We want to make it easy to join Conduit.
• Generational opportunity. Be early at a company defining the software layer for industrial automation.
• American re-industrialization is happening. We’re building the platform to make it real — faster.
• Zero bureaucracy. High impact. You’ll be on the front lines, solving real problems for real factories.
• You will level up. You’ll work directly with the founder and exec team — and grow into a senior operator

Conduit is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates.