Robotics Software Test Engineer

Chef Robotics is on a mission to accelerate the advent of intelligent machines in the physical world, starting with food. We build AI-powered robots that assemble fresh meals at scale for some of the largest food producers in North America — companies making ready-to-eat meals for airlines, retailers, meal kits, and the frozen food aisle.

Our robots operate in high-mix, high-variability production environments where ingredients change shape, color, and consistency from one tray to the next. Solving this requires tightly coupled perception, manipulation, and learning — and a team that ships hardware-software systems into customer facilities and keeps them running.

Headquartered in San Francisco, we are a venture-backed team of robotics, ML, and operations engineers building the foundation for general-purpose food robotics.

About the Role

Chef Robotics is building autonomous robots that work alongside humans in commercial food preparation environments — and a software regression in production isn't just a bug, it's a missed meal, a stopped line, or a customer incident. As a Robotics Software Test Engineer, you own the quality bar for our entire robot software stack: perception, autonomy, platform, and the integrations between them.

This is a builder role, not a manual QA role. You'll design and implement the test infrastructure, CI/CD gates, and hardware-in-the-loop validation systems that let a small team ship fast without breaking things in the field. You'll work directly with perception and robotics engineers — embedded in the team, not downstream of it — and your test frameworks will be first-class engineering artifacts.

We are a small, high-ownership team. We work onsite five days a week and move with startup urgency.

In this role, you will:

• Design and implement automated test plans, test cases, and fixtures across the full robot software stack — from unit tests to system-level integration tests
• Build and own hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test infrastructure that validates perception, robotics, and platform software against real or simulated hardware
• Strengthen and extend CI/CD pipelines to catch regressions early and gate releases with high confidence
• Define quality metrics and release readiness criteria; track test coverage, failure trends, and fleet health to give the team clear signal
• Investigate and root-cause production failures across software, hardware, and system boundaries; build regression tests to prevent recurrence
• Develop simulation-based test environments to validate perception and robotics changes before deploying to physical robots
• Participate in design and code reviews with a lens on testability, observability, and failure modes
• Instrument the robot software stack for better debuggability and post-hoc failure analysis

What You Bring:

• 3+ years of experience in software test engineering, reliability engineering, or a closely related role
• Strong Python skills
• Hands-on experience designing and building test infrastructure — not just writing tests, but building the systems that run them
• Experience with CI/CD systems and integrating automated testing into release pipelines
• Strong debugging instincts — able to trace failures across software layers, hardware interfaces, and timing boundaries
• Solid understanding of testing methodologies across unit, integration, system, and hardware-in-the-loop layers
• Comfort working in Linux-based development and production environments
• Self-starter who can prioritize independently in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment

Nice-to-have:

• Experience testing robotics software stacks (ROS, perception pipelines, control systems)
• Familiarity with simulation environments (Gazebo, Isaac Sim) for test scenario generation
• Experience with Docker or containerized test environments
• Background in data logging, observability pipelines, or fleet monitoring systems
• Knowledge of networking protocols relevant to robotics (TCP/UDP, PTP, gRPC)
• Experience with hardware bring-up, sensor calibration, or embedded systems testing
• Prior work in fast-paced robotics or hardware startups

$140,000 - $180,000 a year

Chef is an early-stage startup where equity is a major part of the compensation package. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position. Within the range, individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

In addition to salary and early-stage equity, we offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, dental, and vision insurance, commuter benefits, flexible paid time off (PTO), catered lunch, and 401(k) matching.