Robotics Systems Architect

Who we are:

Formic is on a mission to reshape American manufacturing by making automation accessible to every factory. As labor constraints rise, costs increase, and global competition intensifies, automation is no longer optional for manufacturers that want to stay competitive.

We deliver automation through a Robotics-as-a-Service model that combines industrial robotics, proprietary software, and full-service support into a single, integrated solution. By removing the traditional barriers of cost, complexity, and risk, we enable manufacturers to deploy automation quickly and realize measurable gains in throughput, safety, and operational efficiency without large upfront capital investment.

Backed by leading investors including Lux Capital, Initialized Capital, Blackhorn Ventures, and Mitsubishi HC Capital North America, Formic is scaling rapidly and building the foundation for a new era of high-performance, Made in America production.

The Software Engineering Team builds and operates the systems that power Formic’s Robotics-as-a-Service platform. The team develops the monitoring, provisioning, and data infrastructure that enables real-time visibility across a growing fleet of deployed industrial robotic systems. Engineering ensures systems are observable, resilient, and remotely diagnosable at scale by building production-grade edge and cloud systems that support reliable data collection, remote troubleshooting, live video streaming, and continuous system improvement.

This work directly impacts fleet uptime, service efficiency, and customer outcomes.

Within Engineering, Formic is launching a brand-new Advanced Robotics Team focused on building next‑generation intelligent robotic systems designed to operate in real industrial environments. This team will develop wheeled humanoids and advanced mobile manipulation platforms, pushing beyond classical robotics stacks into modern embodied AI systems.

Formic is uniquely positioned to do this. We already operate hundreds of deployed robotic systems and maintain production‑grade deployment, monitoring, and fleet infrastructure across real manufacturing customers. This provides what most humanoid startups do not: continuous real‑world data, production testing environments, and a clear path from research to scaled deployment.

This is not a demo lab. We are building learning‑driven robotic systems that operate daily in real factories.

As a Robotics Systems Architect, you will define and lead the control architecture for next‑generation intelligent robotic platforms, including wheeled humanoids and advanced mobile manipulators. You will own the system‑level design of whole‑body control, actuator interfaces, and deterministic execution across the robotics stack.

This role sits at the core of hardware, controls, and embodied intelligence. You will work across software, AI, and hardware domains to ensure our robotic systems are safe, performant, and deployable in real industrial environments. Your work will directly influence how learning‑driven systems translate policy outputs into reliable, real‑world motion.

• Architect and lead development of whole‑body control systems for advanced robotic platforms including humanoids
• Design real‑time control interfaces and hardware abstraction layers
• Define actuator interfaces and enforce hardware performance specifications with external manufacturing partners
• Develop and optimize kinematics, dynamics, and coordinated motion control systems
• Own safety architecture and deterministic execution across the robotics stack
• Collaborate with AI and perception teams to define state representations and control APIs
• Validate hardware performance including torque bandwidth, latency, and thermal behavior
• Lead system‑level integration, testing, and debugging across hardware and software boundaries
• Drive architectural decisions that balance research flexibility with production reliability
• Ensure systems are deployable, serviceable, and scalable in real‑world industrial environments

• 8+ years of experience building complex robotic systems
• Strong background in control…