Robot Platform Engineer - Humanoid; human

At NEURA Robotics, we are building 4NE-1, a cognitive humanoid robot designed to operate safely and autonomously in real-world environments. We are looking for a Robot Platform Engineer to join our Humanoid team and help develop the software foundation that connects hardware, controls, middleware, and applications into a reliable production-ready robotics platform.

This role sits at the intersection of robotics software, embedded systems, distributed systems, middleware, and hardware integration. You will work directly with engineers across locomotion, whole-body control, manipulation, perception, state estimation, and embedded software to ensure the humanoid platform operates reliably on real hardware.

We are looking for a strong C++ software engineer who enjoys working close to the robot, solving system-level challenges, and building robust software infrastructure for complex robotic systems.

• Develop and maintain the software abstraction layer connecting 4NE-1 hardware capabilities to NEURA's platform software.

• Integrate actuators, joints, limbs, hands, sensors, safety systems, and robot controllers into a unified software architecture.

• Create and maintain hardware interfaces that expose robot capabilities to control, planning, and application layers.

• Collaborate closely with controls, locomotion, and hardware teams on platform-wide integration.

• Integrate software components across the humanoid stack, including locomotion, manipulation, whole-body control, state estimation, perception, diagnostics, and robot operations.

• Design and maintain communication pathways between embedded systems, robot software, and higher-level applications.

• Work with DDS-based communication systems and real-time software pipelines.

• Support deployment and integration of robotics middleware frameworks such as ROS 2, Dora, DDS-native architectures, or other distributed robotics systems.

• Collaborate with Middleware Engineers on the broader software platform architecture.

• Design and maintain the humanoid operational state machine covering:
  BOOT → HOMING → STAND → OPERATIONAL → FAULT → E-STOP → RECOVERY

• Implement transition guards, recovery procedures, timeout handling, and fault escalation mechanisms.

• Ensure safe and predictable robot behavior throughout all operational phases.

• Develop and maintain software for robot operating modes, including:

  • Locomotion

  • Standing and balancing

  • Manipulation

  • Whole-body control

  • Gravity compensation

  • Service and maintenance modes

  • Recovery procedures

• Implement safe controller switching and mode-transition logic.

• Develop software responsible for startup, calibration, homing, and shutdown procedures.

• Integrate sensors, actuators, motor controllers, and embedded subsystems.

• Support robot bring-up and commissioning activities on physical hardware.

• Debug software issues in real-world environments where timing, synchronization, and hardware behavior matter.

• Develop watchdog and fault-management mechanisms.

• Implement fault detection, classification, recovery, and escalation logic.

• Build robot-wide health monitoring systems covering:

  • Joint and actuator health

  • Thermal monitoring

  • Controller status

  • Communication health

  • Sensor availability

  • System diagnostics

• Ensure robust and safe robot operation under both expected and unexpected conditions.

• Develop and maintain gRPC-based robot control services.

• Implement APIs for operational state management, diagnostics, fault handling, telemetry, and robot control.

• Contribute to Protocol Buffer definitions and API evolution together with platform and SDK teams.

• Develop platform-level integration tests covering the complete humanoid system.

• Validate software in simulation environments such as Mu Jo Co  and Isaac Sim.

• Support continuous integration and automated testing pipelines.

• Verify functionality on physical 4NE-1 robots.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Software…