Senior Systems Engineer – Software & Autonomy

Here at Humanoid, we believe in a future where robots amplify human potential. That’s why we’ve set out on a mission to build the world’s most capable, commercially-scalable, and safe humanoid robots. We’re bringing that mission to life with HMND‑01 - our rapidly developed humanoid platform being deployed in real industrial environments - and we’re growing the team to take it even further.

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Systems Engineer – Software & Autonomy to support the definition, architecture, integration, and verification of the software systems that enable our humanoid robotic platform.

The role will work across perception, localisation, navigation, artificial intelligence, motion planning, controls, ROS 2 platform software, simulation, deployment, and diagnostics. You will collaborate with software leads and subject matter experts to translate product and operational needs into coherent capabilities, requirements, architectures, interfaces, integration plans, and verification criteria.

This is a systems engineering position focused on the robot’s software and autonomy stack. It is not primarily a firmware development or electrical engineering role.

What You'll Do

• Obtain input from system leaders, product teams, and technical subject matter experts to translate stakeholder needs into clear and verifiable system and software requirements.

• Define the software capabilities required to support humanoid robot behaviours, operational use cases, and product objectives.

• Decompose system-level capabilities across perception, navigation, AI, planning, controls, core platform, and supporting software services.

• Develop and maintain the functional and logical architecture of the robot’s software and autonomy stack.

• Define system boundaries, responsibilities, dependencies, and interfaces between software components and technical teams.

• Establish interface requirements covering data ownership, message definitions, coordinate frames, units, timing, latency, synchronization, quality indicators, fault handling, and degraded operation.

• Support architectural decisions involving, middleware, compute allocation, networking, simulation, software deployment, and distributed execution.

• Coordinate integration across perception, navigation, AI, controls, platform software, firmware, electronics, sensors, actuators, and mechanical systems.

• Identify cross-team assumptions, dependencies, architectural conflicts, and missing functionality before they become late-stage integration issues.

• Define integration stages, entry and exit criteria, required test environments, and readiness expectations.

• Lead or support the investigation of complex system-level issues involving multiple software components or interactions between software and hardware.

• Define nominal, degraded, recovery, fallback, and safe-state behaviours for software-intensive functions.

• Develop system-level verification and validation strategies for autonomous robotic capabilities.

• Establish measurable performance and acceptance criteria for perception, localization, navigation, planning, controls, AI, and integrated robot behaviours.

• Support scenario-based testing using simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, laboratory testing, and physical robot testing.

• Maintain traceability between use cases, requirements, architecture, implementation, tests, and verification evidence.

• Work with safety engineers to ensure software behaviours support system safety requirements and hazard mitigations.

• Facilitate requirement, architecture, interface, integration, and system-readiness reviews.

• Communicate technical risks, capability limitations, integration status, and architectural trade-offs to engineering and program leadership.

• Coach engineering teams in practical systems engineering methods appropriate for an iterative robotics development environment.

What We're Looking For

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Systems Engineering, Software Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, Mechatronics, Controls Engineering, or a related field.

• Five or more years of experience in systems engineering, robotics software, software architecture, autonomous systems, or a related technical domain.

• Experience working with complex software-intensive or cyber-physical systems composed of multiple interacting subsystems.

• Strong knowledge of requirements engineering, architecture definition, interface management, integration, verification, validation, and traceability.

• Technical experience in several of the following areas:

  • ROS or ROS 2

  • Robotics software

  • Perception and sensor fusion

  • Localization, mapping, and navigation

  • Motion or behaviour planning

  • Manipulation, locomotion, or whole-body controls

  • Artificial intelligence or machine learning

  • Simulation and virtual testing

  • Distributed or real-time software systems

• Ability to understand and evaluate software behaviour without being the primary implementation owner for every component.

• Experience defining measurable acceptance criteria for complex system behaviours.

• Ability to investigate issues spanning algorithms, software, computing, networking, firmware, sensors, actuators, and physical robot behaviour.

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, leadership, and technical communication skills.
  Experience with humanoid robots, mobile robots, autonomous vehicles, industrial robotics, or similar systems.

• Familiarity with ROS 2 topics, services, actions, quality-of-service policies, lifecycle management, TF, rosbag, and distributed execution.

• Familiarity with C++, Python, Linux, Git, CI/CD, containers, and modern software development workflows.

• Experience with simulation tools such as Isaac Sim, Gazebo, MuJoCo, MATLAB/Simulink, or equivalent platforms.

• Experience with SysML, model-based systems engineering, or software architecture modelling.

• Familiarity with functional safety, SOTIF, machinery safety, cybersecurity, or safety assurance for autonomous systems.

• Understanding of machine-learning performance, uncertainty, dataset coverage, and scenario-based validation.

What We Offer

• Competitive equity: stock options with meaningful upside as we scale.

• 30+ paid days off, including 23 days of annual leave, all UK bank holidays, and additional company closure days (including Christmas–New Year shutdown).

• Private healthcare, including virtual and in-person care.

• Pension scheme with 8% total contribution (5% employee, 3% employer) on full earnings.

• Free daily breakfast, catered lunch, and snacks in-office.

• Work at the frontier - collaborate daily with world-class engineers, researchers, and product experts building the next generation of AI and humanoid robotics.

• Real ownership - direct access to founding leadership, meaningful input on product direction, and the ability to drive key initiatives from day one.