Teleoperations Manager

About Watney

Watney develops autonomous robots to enable the growth of critical infrastructure. Having recently raised $21 million in seed funding from Conviction, Abstract and A*, we’re partnering with the world’s largest hyperscalers to accelerate datacenter buildout and breakfix.

Join now for a ground-floor seat with outsized ownership and visibility as we scale from prototype to production fleets. Ship real systems, shape the rollout playbook, and leave fingerprints on a category-defining robotics company.

The Role

We are hiring a Teleoperation Manager to stand up and lead our teleoperations capability — the critical human-in-the-loop layer that ensures our robots perform reliably in the field as we scale autonomy. You will own the operational layer that enables success in all our customer engagements, and you will be the operational heartbeat that keeps our robots delivering value while the autonomy stack continues to mature.

This is not a back-office role. It’s mission control. You will lead from the front, owning both the performance of the teleop team and the systems they use. Your work will directly determine the success of our customer pilots, the reliability of our fleet, and our credibility in the market.

What You’ll Do

• Stand up teleoperations as a function: Define playbooks, protocols, and training to establish world-class operational reliability from day one.

• Lead a team of teleoperators: Recruit, train, and manage a group capable of monitoring and intervening in robot operations with precision and urgency.

• Run mission-critical ops: Ensure seamless oversight of customer pilots, with clear accountability for uptime, safety, and customer experience.

• Drive continuous improvement: Collect and analyze ops data, identify failure modes, and work with autonomy engineers to reduce intervention rates.

• Shape the culture of reliability: Set the standard for discipline, responsiveness, and operational excellence that scales with our fleet.

What You'll Bring

• Experience in mission-critical operations leadership (aviation, defense, robotics, or autonomous vehicles).

• Track record of building and leading high-performance teams in high-stakes environments.

• Strong technical literacy — comfortable engaging with robotics/autonomy systems and learning quickly.

• Bias for action and accountability: You thrive in environments where mistakes are costly and performance expectations are uncompromising.

• Comfort with ambiguity and intensity — you can build systems while running them.

Why Join Us

• Critical ownership: You will own the operational layer that enables success in all our customer engagements.

• High visibility: Your team’s performance will be directly tied to company credibility and growth.

• Founding impact: As an early employee, your leadership will shape culture, process, and standards for years to come.

• Hyperscale ambition: Build the operations backbone for robots that will manage global compute infrastructure.

• Mission-driven intensity: Join a team competing at the highest level, solving autonomy problems with zero room for failure.

We’re committed to building a diverse, inclusive team. At Watney Robotics, we welcome people of all backgrounds and identities, and we make hiring decisions based on skills, experience, and potential. If you’re passionate about robotics but don’t meet every requirement, we still encourage you to apply!

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