Founding Software Engineer
AUTOPILOTAbout the role
Location: Chicago, IL Headquarters
Type: Full-time, in office
Company Stage: Early-stage / startup
This role is a full-time opportunity to make a meaningful impact as we continue building and scaling our business. We believe this position offers strong ownership, growth potential, and the chance to contribute directly to Autopilot’s next phase of growth.
About Us — Our Mission & Vision
At Autopilot, our mission is to free people up to do what they do best by automating everything else. We are building the infrastructure layer that powers autonomy in motion across the physical world — including sports, fitness, logistics, healthcare, and more. Our systems help robots move, record, deliver, train, and connect in real-world environments that have historically lacked modern tooling. Our values are simple and non-negotiable: Do Good. Have Fun. Make Money. We believe these are mutually reinforcing, and we work hard to uphold them as we grow.
We move fast, operate scrappy, and care deeply about building something that works.
Benefits
You will be eligible to participate in company benefits and perks, which currently include:
Base Salary + Annual bonus potential
100% Employer-covered Health, Dental, and Vision Insurance
401(k) — Company-administered plan
Flexible PTO — Time off as needed, coordinated with your team
18 Paid Holiday Days
Travel Reimbursement — Reimbursed in accordance with company policy, where role-related travel is required
Team & Culture Events — Team offsites, social events, and company-sponsored activities
Benefits and policies may be updated from time to time at the company’s discretion.
The Role
We’re looking for a Founding Software Engineer to help build Autopilot from the ground up. This is not a typical engineering role — you’ll be shaping the product, architecture, and culture of the company alongside the founding team. You’ll work across the stack and into the real world, building systems that directly power autonomous workflows, robotics deployments, and physical operations. If you want to build something that actually exists outside of a screen and you’re excited by speed, ownership, and ambiguity, this role is for you.
Why This Role
Massive ownership: your work will directly shape the company
0 → 1 → scale: build foundational systems from scratch, then scale them across a growing robot fleet
Real-world impact: not just dashboards — infrastructure that powers robots operating in physical environments
Tight feedback loops: ship fast, see it work (or break) immediately
Small, elite team: no bureaucracy, just building
What You’ll Do
Design, build, and own our cloud infrastructure from 0 to 1
Architect and operate Kubernetes (GKE) workloads for fleet orchestration, telemetry ingestion, and real-time robot communication
Build scalable backend services and data pipelines that connect software to real-world robotics
Design for scale: take systems from a handful of robots to fleets across many sites
Own reliability, observability, and deployment infrastructure (CI/CD, monitoring, alerting, autoscaling)
Ship fast, iterate constantly, and talk directly to users
Work across the stack where needed (backend, APIs, integrations, frontend)
Make key technical decisions that define the company’s foundation
Partner closely with Customer Support, Robot Ops, and Product Teams
Solve messy, real-world problems that don’t have clean abstractions
What We’re Looking For (Must Haves)
Ability to work fast
Proven track record of shipping production software end-to-end
Startup or founding engineer experience
Strong hands-on experience with GCP (e.g., GKE, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage, IAM)
Deep experience with Kubernetes: deploying, operating, and scaling production workloads
Experience designing distributed systems and cloud architectures built to scale
High ownership with a strong bias to action
Thrives in ambiguity and moves independently
Strong product and engineering judgment
Excited to build systems that operate in messy real-world environments
Able to collaborate closely with hardware, ops, and product teams
4+ years of experience
Bonus Points
Experience with Three.js or WebGL for 3D visualization (robot telemetry, digital twins, spatial interfaces)
Experience scaling robot fleet infrastructure — telemetry, OTA updates, remote monitoring, fleet orchestration
Experience with robotics, automation, or hardware-adjacent systems (ROS, edge computing, real-time messaging)
Track record of shipping quickly and iterating from real usage
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and own our cloud infrastructure from 0 to 1
- Architect and operate Kubernetes workloads for fleet orchestration
- Build scalable backend services and data pipelines
- Own reliability, observability, and deployment infrastructure
- Ship fast, iterate constantly, and talk directly to users
- Make key technical decisions that define the company’s foundation
Qualifications
- Proven track record of shipping production software end-to-end
- Startup or founding engineer experience
- Strong hands-on experience with GCP
- Deep experience with Kubernetes
- Experience designing distributed systems and cloud architectures
Benefits
- Base Salary + Annual bonus potential
- 100% Employer-covered Health, Dental, and Vision Insurance
- 401(k) — Company-administered plan
- Flexible PTO — Time off as needed
- 18 Paid Holiday Days
- Travel Reimbursement
- Team & Culture Events
Skills mentioned
About AUTOPILOT
Autopilot is building the platform enterprises use to deploy, manage, and scale autonomous systems in the physical world. We are still in stealth, but we’ve closed our latest round and are adding key hires to round out our world-class team. From drones to autonomous vehicles, our founding team has built and sold more robots than most teams in the world. Our mission is to free people from repetitive, dangerous, and physically demanding work so they can spend more time doing the things people do best: creating, connecting, solving problems, and caring for one another. We believe the future of work should be more human, not less. Today, bringing robots and other intelligent machines into real business environments remains fragmented, complex, and difficult to scale. Autopilot connects hardware, software, workflows, and human support to turn autonomous technology into reliable operational outcomes. We are currently operating in stealth and working alongside leading enterprises, robotics companies, and infrastructure partners across mission-critical industries. Our team brings experience commercializing autonomous systems, enterprise software, and emerging technologies. We are backed by leading venture and industrial investors. Our philosophy is simple: do good, have fun, and make money. We want to build a consequential company, create meaningful value for our customers and communities, and enjoy the people and the process along the way. If you want to help shape how intelligence enters the physical world while building a future that gives people more freedom, agency, and time for the things that matter, we would love to meet you.