Robotics Engineer - UGV Control Systems

About the role

The company is looking for a software engineer to take ownership of the software for its unmanned ground vehicles (UGV), covering both the operator control station and the onboard vehicle systems. You will develop the software that lets operators drive, monitor and diagnose the vehicle reliably, working closely with electronics and mechanical engineers on software architecture, implementation, hardware integration, testing and deployment.

Key responsibilities

• Design and maintain the UGV software architecture, including communication between the control station, onboard computer and vehicle controllers.
• Develop the operator control application: driving controls, live camera views, telemetry, system status, alarms and configuration tools.
• Develop onboard software for vehicle operation, command processing, subsystem coordination and health monitoring.
• Integrate motor controllers and implement motion control (steering, speed and torque commands, acceleration/deceleration profiles, braking coordination).
• Read and process motor feedback, encoder data, battery/BMS information and other vehicle sensors.
• Implement reliable command and telemetry communication, including connection monitoring and recovery after interruptions.
• Develop software safety functions: command validation, watchdogs, communication-loss behaviour and coordination with hardware emergency-stop and protection systems.
• Integrate cameras and video streaming between vehicle and control station.
• Build logging, diagnostics, fault reporting and software update tools.
• Run bench tests and field tests, investigate faults and improve performance.
• Maintain source code, interface specifications, test procedures and deployment documentation.

Required profile

• Strong programming skills in C++ and Python.
• Experience developing software for Linux-based systems.
• Practical experience with robotics, embedded systems, industrial automation or vehicle control.
• Ability to debug software interacting with physical hardware and diagnose problems across software, communication and electrical interfaces.
• Ability to carry software features from requirements through implementation and validation independently.

Required skills

• Motor control concepts, feedback control and communication with motor drives.
• CAN bus, UART/RS-232 and Ethernet interfaces; network protocols, asynchronous communication and multithreaded software.
• Git, structured testing and technical documentation.
• Preferred: ROS 2 and robotic middleware, wheeled robot kinematics, skid steering and closed-loop motion control, Qt/QML or similar for operator interfaces, camera integration and video encoding, embedded microcontrollers and real-time control, wireless communication under limited bandwidth, hardware-in-the-loop testing and simulation.