Tech Lead — Robot Communication & Connectivity (human)
LocationMetzingen / Riederich
Work modeon-site
Typefull-time
SeniorityLead
Experience8+ yrs
DepartmentSoftware Engineering
Company size1,001–5,000 people
PostedMay 22, 2026 · 4mo ago
Verified live13h ago
At a glanceSummarised by Seekless from the posting.
Must have12
Hands-on EtherCAT master stack implementation and commissioning on production robot hardware
IEEE 1588/PTP hardware clock synchronisation implementation experience on physical hardware
TSN stack configuration: 802.1Qbv/Qav/AS traffic shaping and deterministic Ethernet scheduling for real-time environments
Deep DDS middleware expertise (FastDDS or equivalent): QoS design, shared-memory transport, zero-copy, domain isolation at production deployment level
gRPC/protobuf API governance experience at the cross-team level — designed APIs that multiple other teams depend on, including versioning and backward compatibility
Fleet robotics platform engineering: OTA pipelines, VDA 5050 mission protocol, fleet telemetry at scale
Developer SDK design for external developers: typed node systems, skill marketplace toolchains, API versioning
Open-source contributions to robotics communication infrastructure (FastDDS, ros2_control, SOEM, or equivalent)
Skills
EtherCAT
SOEM
EtherLab
IEEE 1588
PTP
TSN
802.1Qbv
802.1Qav
802.1AS
FastDDS
DDS
gRPC
protobuf
ROS2
ros2_control
C++17
C++20
PROFINET
EtherNet/IP
OPC UA
FSoE
PROFIsafe
VDA 5050
Your mission & challenges
About the role
Every byte of data that moves between a NEURA robot’s servo drives and the fleet cloud passes through layers of communication infrastructure. As Staff Engineer for our Robot Communication & Connectivity cluster, you own the technical architecture of that entire vertical — from the real-time drive bus at the hardware boundary, through robot abstraction middleware and industrial fieldbus protocols, all the way up to fleet cloud connectivity and the Neuraverse developer SDK.
This is a pure individual contributor role. You carry no people management responsibility. Your authority is technical: you set architectural direction, hold permanent veto on design decisions within your scope, and are the person the team calls when a communication boundary decision is genuinely non-trivial.
You will provide technical leadership to approximately 20 engineers across platform guild and product-anchor roles. You write code, lead design reviews, author technical RFCs, and maintain current hands-on expertise across the communication stack. This is not an architecture-only position.
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Own the architectural direction for the full robot communication stack: real-time drive bus, robot middleware, gRPC control API design, industrial fieldbus protocols, fleet cloud connectivity, and the Neuraverse developer SDK
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Define and maintain the co-review protocol at the boundary between RT OS scheduling and the EtherCAT master — any board support package change must pass a joint latency budget review before merge; you own this process alongside the Robot Systems cluster lead
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Own gRPC control API governance: proto contract standards, versioning policy, backward compatibility, and streaming RPC patterns that all robot platform integration engineers implement against
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Set DDS and ROS2 middleware standards across all platforms: QoS policy, shared-memory transport, zero-copy configuration, and domain isolation
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Own the protocol stack architectural direction for industrial fieldbus integration: PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, OPC UA, and safety bus implementations; define the boundary between the protocol stack and the industrial interface server layers
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Drive quarterly cross-team state machine and API design reviews: any transition guard or gRPC API change that could be generalised must be design-reviewed before platform-specific implementation
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Lead quarterly cluster knowledge days: peer-to-peer problem exchange where every engineer brings one unsolved and one solved problem; output is a shared library ticket or design document, never slides
Hands-on EtherCAT master stack implementation and commissioning on production robot hardware — SOEM, EtherLab, or equivalent; configuration alone is not sufficient
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IEEE 1588/PTP hardware clock synchronisation implementation experience on physical hardware
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TSN stack configuration: 802.1Qbv/Qav/AS traffic shaping and deterministic Ethernet scheduling for real-time environments
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Deep DDS middleware expertise (FastDDS or equivalent): QoS design, shared-memory transport, zero-copy, domain isolation at production deployment level
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Robot middleware and API design
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gRPC/protobuf API governance experience at the cross-team level — you have designed APIs that multiple other teams depend on, including versioning and backward compatibility
Robot operational state machine design for safety-critical systems: boot, homing, fault, emergency stop, and recovery cycle patterns
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C++17/20 at RT loop constraints: lock-free data structures, 1 kHz control loop discipline, latency profiling
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Staff-level leadership (mandatory)
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Demonstrated cross-team architectural impact: your design decisions changed how multiple teams work, not just your own domain
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RFC or design document leadership with cross-team reach: you have resolved interface conflicts between teams and had your proposal adopted as the standard
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Mentoring track record: at least one engineer you have materially accelerated toward a senior or staff-equivalent level
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8+ years of hands-on engineering experience spanning embedded real-time systems and robot communication middleware