Senior XR Software Engineer - Teleoperation

Job Title: Senior XR Software Engineer, Teleoperation

Department: Software Engineering

Employment Type: Full-Time

FLSA Status: Exempt

Location: Houston, TX

Travel: 10%

Who We Are

Persona AI is building humanoid robots for the most demanding environments in heavy industry — shipyards, steel mills, fabrication facilities, and offshore platforms — performing welding, grinding, maintenance, inspection, and material-handling work that is dangerous, physically demanding, and increasingly difficult to staff.

We are backed by leading strategic and financial investors and engaged with global industrial leaders across Korea, Japan, the United States, and Singapore. Korea is the center of gravity for our early commercial strategy, anchored by relationships with the world’s leading shipbuilders and steelmakers. Our work spans both the robot platform itself and the systems, partners, and playbooks required to deploy it at scale.

Why Join Persona AI?

• We offer competitive compensation, a performance-based bonus, 100% employer covered medical benefits for most healthcare plans, early-stage equity, competitive PTO, and company-wide paid winter break between December 24th and January 2nd.

• You’ll shape technology that’s redefining the possibilities of robotics and human interaction.

• Work alongside passionate teammates who value creativity, and continuous learning.

About the Role

As a Senior XR Software Engineer on our Teleoperation team, you’ll build and own core parts of the system that lets a person step inside a humanoid robot and work through it in real time, from the operator’s headset to the robot and from simulation through deployment at customer sites. That includes the VR headset app, low-latency stereo video, whole-body and hand tracking mapped onto the robot, and the safety systems that keep it under control when the network doesn’t cooperate.

The work is hands-on. You’ll write code, test it in the headset and on real robots in our Houston lab, and work closely with locomotion, controls, autonomy and machine learning engineers. Teleop is one of the ways our robots collect the training data behind our machine learning models, how operators take over when autonomy reaches its limits, and how customers get work done in places too hazardous for people. You’ll join a small team where your experience directly shapes our technical direction.

If you want to build XR software that drives real robots doing real industrial work, this role is for you.

What You Will Be Doing

• Design and build the headset application and robot-side services, written primarily in Rust

• Build the native OpenXR application operators use to drive humanoids, robot arms, and dexterous hands, including its HUD, onboarding, and in-headset guidance

• Stream stereo video and robot state to the operator, and operator commands to the robot, with low latency over Wi-Fi and wide-area networks, and keep the robot safe when the connection degrades

• Map operator motion onto the robot, including whole-body and arm retargeting, dexterous hand retargeting, and pre-programmed grasps

• Work with locomotion, controls, autonomy, and machine learning engineers so teleoperation produces high-quality training data and can take over when autonomy needs help

• Build simulation environments and automated tests that validate teleoperation changes before they reach hardware

• Run evaluations with real operators, measure where they struggle, and turn the results into improvements

• Support teleoperation at customer sites, and mentor junior engineers on the team

What We Are Looking For:

• 5+ years of professional software experience, with a BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field

• 3+ years building XR or real-time 3D applications (OpenXR, Unity, Unreal, or similar), including shipping an XR application, game, or other real-time interactive product to real users and improving it based on their feedback

• Strong systems programming in C++ or Rust, plus solid Python for tooling and test automation. Most of our code is Rust, but Rust experience isn’t required. Strong C++ developers can learn it here.

• Networking fundamentals (UDP, TCP, Wi-Fi) and experience shipping latency-sensitive systems over unreliable networks

• Working knowledge of 3D math, including transforms and rotations, and experience debugging software on real hardware under Linux

• Strong ownership and clear communication across hardware, controls, and machine learning teams

Bonus Skills:

• Robotics or teleoperation experience, such as robot kinematics, hand and body tracking, or motion retargeting

• Production Rust experience

• OpenXR development on standalone headsets such as Meta Quest, including custom shaders and GPU profiling on mobile hardware

• Video encoding and streaming, including H.264/H.265, hardware encoders, and forward error correction

• Experience with MuJoCo or NVIDIA Isaac Sim, or robot data collection for imitation learning

Persona AI is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.