Roboticist In Residence

About Nominal

Nominal is building the software infrastructure powering the world’s most advanced hardware systems — from spacecraft and autonomous vehicles to next-generation industrial machines. Our platform ingests high-rate telemetry, validates complex autonomy software in real time, and enables engineers to iterate faster without sacrificing safety or precision. We’re a small, fast-moving team of engineers and operators who own problems end-to-end, work across disciplines, and thrive on challenges at the intersection of hardware and software.

As a dual-use platform, we serve top-tier commercial and defense customers, including the U.S. Navy, United States Air Force, Shield AI, and Anduril. We’re backed by Sequoia, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Lightspeed Ventures. Our team draws experience from SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Applied Intuition, and other leading companies — united by a common mission: enabling hardware engineers to push the boundaries of advanced technology with speed, safety, and precision.

As Roboticist-in-Residence, You’ll...
Bring deep robotics expertise to Nominal’s test and autonomy stack. You’ll serve as the in-house expert for robotic system integration and perception pipelines, helping bridge the gap between advanced robotics systems and real-world test infrastructure. You’ll work hands-on across our customer base—drones, UGVs, manipulators, and more—accelerating their ability to validate autonomy and perception using Nominal Connect.

This role is highly technical, customer-facing, and exploratory: a mix of R&D, field deployment, and product shaping. You should feel at home debugging CAN bus issues on a flight controller, optimizing reinforcement learning loop performance, or visualizing test runs in Nominal Connect and complementary tools like Foxglove, Rerun, or Mujoco.

🚀 What You’ll Do:
• Own Autonomy Integration: Interface robotic systems with Nominal Connect—CAN bus, cameras, control loops, and autonomy stack.
• Perception & RL Tooling: Build pipelines within Nominal Connect to support vision-based navigation, object detection, and real-time feedback into reinforcement learning loops.
• Sim & Visualize: Integrate simulation and visualization environments into Nominal Connect—including tools like Mujoco, Isaac Gym, and Rerun—to streamline validation workflows.
• Support Customers: Deploy on-site with autonomy teams and test operators to integrate with their robots and support missions using Nominal Connect as the foundation.
• Build Reusable Interfaces: Develop general-purpose modules in Nominal Connect for handling CAN, video, telemetry, and actuator data across platforms.
• Guide Product Direction: Influence Connect’s roadmap with insights from field deployments and robotic system users.

🔍 Who You Are:
• Experienced Roboticist: You've built and deployed robotic systems—whether in research, startups, or field operations.
• CAN Bus Expert: Comfortable debugging low-level communications and writing interfaces for robotic subsystems.
• Computer Vision Pro: Experience with perception pipelines—monocular/stereo VO, object tracking, pose estimation, etc.
• RL + Sim Enthusiast: Familiar with reinforcement learning workflows and simulation environments—ideally integrated through Nominal Connect and tools like Mujoco or Isaac Gym.
• Debugging Mindset: Thrive in fast-moving, ambiguous environments where you debug cross-disciplinary systems.
• Tooling Savvy: Hands-on with Nominal Connect and visual tooling like Rerun or Foxglove for robotics telemetry and autonomy stack debugging.
• Technical Polyglot: Proficient in Python, with working knowledge of C++ or Rust when needed.

🌟 Bonus Points:
• Worked on fielded autonomous systems (drones, quadrupeds, mobile robots)
• Experience with time-synced telemetry pipelines (e.g. ROS 2, MCAP, or LCM)
• Built simulation-test loops or hardware-in-the-loop testbeds
• Former contributor to robotics competitions or open-source autonomy stacks

✨ Benefits & Perks:
• 🏥 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 🏖️ Unlimited PTO and sick leave
• 🍽️ Free lunch, snacks, and coffee
• 🚀 Professional Development Stipend
• ✈️ Annual company retreats

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.

ITAR Requirements
To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.