Lead Systems Engineer

About Us

We're Queue, the world's first fully autonomous robotic pharmacy. We go from sealed wholesale bottles to filled, verified prescription vials with zero human involvement.

We built Queue because no one should ever have to wait in line for the medicines they need. One in three US pharmacies has shut down. Pharmacists are overworked to a breaking point. And patients are paying the price. Queue fixes that. Pharmacists get to practice pharmacy again — counseling patients, catching interactions, doing the work only they can do. And patients get their prescriptions in 60 seconds or less, any time, anywhere.

We're backed by over $18 million from Alleycorp, Riot Ventures, Ubiquity Ventures, House Capital, and others who believe the pharmacy system is broken and that robotics can fix it. Queue was founded by Nick Desai (6x founder, previously CEO of Heal) and Joshua Liu (previously Tesla, Waymo, and Zipline).

As Queue's second systems engineer, you'll be a technical leader and a true partner to the Head of Systems Engineering. You'll hold real authority over the architecture, safety, and regulatory direction of a fully autonomous system that dispenses medication to patients — with no human in the loop to catch a mistake.

This is a staff / principal level role. Together we'll build Queue's systems engineering culture: how we make decisions, how we define "safe enough," and how we prove it to ourselves, our partners, and the regulators who oversee pharmacy. You'll set the bar others work to, and your judgment will shape the company as we scale from pilot sites to nationwide deployment.

• Partner with the Head of Systems Engineering to define SE processes, standards, tooling, and review practices across the company

• Own critical architectural decisions end to end, with authority to set direction and hold the line on margins, safety, and quality

• Act as the technical integrator across hardware, software, autonomy, operations, and pharmacy teams

• Mentor engineers across disciplines and grow systems thinking throughout the organization

• Influence roadmap and product strategy alongside executive leadership

• Define and own the system safety strategy for a fully autonomous pharmacy, from hazard analysis through a defensible safety case

• Apply Safety of the Intended Function (SOTIF) methods to identify and reduce risk from performance limitations, edge cases, and unknown-unsafe scenarios — not just component failures

• Lead hazard analyses (e.g., STPA, FMEA, FTA) spanning perception, dispensing verification, software, and human interaction

• Set safety metrics, acceptance criteria, and residual-risk arguments; build the evidence (simulation, testing, field data) that supports them

• Establish safety monitoring and incident-learning loops as the fleet grows

• Own the regulatory strategy for autonomous dispensing across state Boards of Pharmacy and relevant federal authorities

• Translate regulator objectives (patient safety, accuracy, traceability, accountability) into system requirements and verifiable evidence

• Represent Queue's engineering case directly with regulators, pharmacy partners, and standards bodies

• Help shape emerging regulatory frameworks for pharmacy automation, working with legal, pharmacy, and business leadership

• Own system requirements, interfaces, and performance, reliability, and safety budgets

• Build and maintain system-level models for throughput, reliability, safety, and cost; use them to drive quantitative trade studies

• Resolve ambiguity through first-principles analysis and clear, well-documented decisions

• Architect for scale, serviceability, and field reliability, updating…