---
title: 'Forward Deployed Robotics Engineer at Eka'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-robotics-engineer-eka-boston-jxtqzxkdmf77'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-20'
---

# Forward Deployed Robotics Engineer at Eka

- **Company:** Eka
- **Location:** Boston, MA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-20
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/ekarobotics/91491000-bbef-4e32-b719-3f42f41b07ce

## Job description

Eka Robotics Eka Robotics is on a mission to build intelligence for the physical world - robots that are fast, general, and reliable. Our approach, grounded in physics, unlocks superhuman capabilities. We are defining the frontier of robotics research and deployment. Our team consists of pioneers in robotics and machine learning. We are now hiring to scale our R&D and commercialization efforts. We are looking for hands-on individuals who are excited to help shape the future of robotics.

## Role Overview

As a Forward Deployed Robotics Engineer, you will serve as the primary on-site technical expert for our robotic manipulation systems. You will be instrumental in supporting robot deployments and company’s product demos globally. When issues arise, you will be the first responder: analyzing field tickets, reproducing issues, gathering diagnostic data, and driving root-cause resolution to ensure maximum fleet uptime. This role requires a strong emphasis on process improvement and exceptional communication skills, as you will eventually operate independently on client sites.

## Responsibilities

- Deployment & Bring-Up: Build, deploy, configure, and troubleshoot robotic arms, grippers and camera systems on-site. Perform spatial/hand-eye calibrations and camera alignment during system setup.
- Fleet Issue Triage: Manage incoming fleet ticket queues, prioritize based on operational impact, and triage failures across hardware, software, and operational layers.
- On-Site Diagnostics & Failure Analysis: Execute physical inspections, run diagnostic tests at robot stations, and perform Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to isolate and reproduce field failures.
- Telemetry & Data Analysis: Analyze telemetry, sensor streams, and system logs to form and validate diagnostic hypotheses.
- Cross-Team Feedback Loop: Partner with core hardware and software R&D teams to escalate complex issues. Directly advise software engineering on new tooling, scripts, and diagnostic features needed to streamline field bring-up.
- Process Improvement: Develop standard diagnostic procedures, troubleshooting flowcharts, and operational guides. Surface recurring fleet issues to engineering to drive design improvements.
- Documentation: Develop clear deployment documentation and procedures to support deployments by third party integrators. Maintain clear, traceable logs for all diagnostic events, field modifications, and escalation workflows.
- Field Operations: Travel 50%+ to lead on-site deployments, customer demonstrations, and operational support.

## Minimum Qualifications

- B.S. in Robotics, Mechatronics, Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
- 2+ years of hands-on experience debugging, troubleshooting, and performing root-cause analysis on complex systems with integrated hardware and software components in deployment.
- Practical experience parsing log files and writing basic diagnostic scripts in Python.
- Solid understanding of the interactions between mechanical, electrical, firmware, and software layers in robotic systems.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the demonstrated ability to articulate technical issues clearly during solo customer engagements and shift handoffs.

## Preferred Qualifications

- M.S. in Robotics, Mechatronics, Systems Engineering, or a related technical field.
- Learning-Based Policy Field Experience: Experience deploying learning-based control models (e.g., imitation learning, RL, or end-to-end vision-to-action policies) on physical manipulators in unstructured environments.
- Deployment Tooling & Automation: Proven track record of writing internal Python tools, CLI scripts, or automated calibration routines that reduce deployment and bring-up cycles.
- Solo Client Site Leadership: Experience acting as the sole technical lead on customer sites or high-stakes field demos, managing on-site communication, de-escalation, and technical execution independently.
- Robot Arm & Bus Architecture: Hands-on experience integrating and configuring 6+ DoF industrial or cobot arms (e.g., Universal Robots, Franka, KUKA, FANUC) with industrial communications (EtherCAT, CANbus, Modbus) and safety controllers.
- Edge Compute & Containerization: Experience managing edge devices, Linux network interfaces, and containerized robotics software stacks (Docker, ROS/ROS2, systemd).
- Field Telemetry Workflows: Familiarity with modern robotics diagnostic tools (e.g., Foxglove Studio, ROS bags) to capture edge failure modes and feed data back into core ML pipelines.
- Process Architecture & FMEA: Experience building field operational processes from scratch, including writing SOPs, conducting FMEA, and structuring field support workflows.

## About Eka

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Eka Robotics is building general-purpose, dexterous robots that master physics through self-supervised learning and a novel Vision-Force-Action (VFA) model, aiming to deploy safe, collaborative intelligence into the physical world.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Startup, Pre-Seed / Angel-backed)
- **Headquarters**: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- **Founded**: 2025
- **Founders**: Pulkit Agrawal and Tuomas Haarnoja

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Robotics Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Hardware, Automation
- **Target customers**: B2B, Enterprise (logistics, manufacturing, material handling)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To build intelligence for the physical world in its native language: force, creating robots that master physics, collaborate safely with humans, and generalize across objects, tasks, and environments.

## Products & Services
- **Vision-Force-Action (VFA) Model**: A new AI foundation model that unites generality, performance, and safety. It allows robots to perceive the world visually, interact with it through force (the "native language" of physics), and execute actions. This model is designed to overcome the traditional trade-off between generality and performance in robotics.
- **Dexterous Robotic Manipulation Platform**: A hardware and software platform for dexterous, collaborative robots. The platform is designed to be safe around humans, environment-agnostic, and capable of mastering the unexpected through a single model that generalizes across objects, tasks, and environments.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (Pre-Seed / Angel-backed startup).
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding: Not publicly available (described as "angel-backed" with no known external funding rounds disclosed).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Angel-backed; specific investors not publicly disclosed. The founding team has deep ties to MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, DeepMind, Microsoft, and Boston Dynamics.
- **Growth Signals**: Extremely early stage (founded in 2025). Despite this, the company has a very high growth trajectory in terms of hiring and web presence. LinkedIn reports 6 employees with +300% monthly growth, and 11 active job postings. Website traffic is growing +254.5% monthly.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Founding Team & Research Pedigree**: Co-founded by Pulkit Agrawal (MIT professor, leader of the Improbable AI Lab, 2024 IEEE Early Academic Career Award) and Tuomas Haarnoja (ex-DeepMind). The team includes talent from MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, CMU, DeepMind, Microsoft, and Boston Dynamics.
- **Novel Technical Approach (VFA Model)**: Their core technology, the Vision-Force-Action (VFA) model, is a claimed breakthrough that unites generality (a single model for many tasks), performance (speed and reliability), and safety (force-based interaction). This is a significant differentiator in the robotics space, which often forces a trade-off between these three attributes.
- **Self-Supervised Learning & Sim-to-Real**: The company pioneers self-supervised learning and sim-to-real reinforcement learning, enabling robots to develop "common sense" and physical intuition automatically without massive amounts of human-labeled data.
- **World-Class Talent Magnet**: Despite being a very early-stage startup, they are attracting top-tier talent from leading tech companies and research labs, indicating a strong technical vision and culture.

## Strategic Focus
- **Productization & Deployment**: The company is actively hiring for roles across engineering, hardware, and operations, signaling a strong push to move from research to a deployable product.
- **Scaling the Team**: With 11 open positions for a company of ~6 employees, the immediate strategic focus is on aggressive team building across all functions (ML, hardware, software, operations).
- **Building the Foundation**: Current priorities include developing the core VFA model, building the physical robotic platform, creating robust simulation environments, and establishing operational processes for scaling.

## Why Work Here
- **Cutting-Edge Mission**: Work on the frontier of embodied AI and robotics, tackling the fundamental challenge of building machines that can interact with the physical world.
- **World-Class Team**: Join a team of experts from top-tier institutions (MIT, Berkeley, DeepMind, Boston Dynamics) and work alongside leaders in the field.
- **High Impact, Early Stage**: As one of the first ~20 employees, you will have an outsized impact on the company's technology, culture, and direction.
- **In-Office Culture**: All roles are based in Boston, MA, and are in-office, fostering close collaboration on complex hardware and software problems.
- **Diverse, High-Caliber Roles**: Openings span from ML/RL engineering and simulation to mechanical design, embedded systems, and business operations, offering a wide range of challenging work.

## Sources
1. [ekarobotics.com](https://ekarobotics.com/)
2. [LinkedIn - Eka Robotics](https://www.linkedin.com/company/eka-robotics)
3. [Dealroom.co - Eka Robotics](https://app.dealroom.co/companies/eka_robotics)
4. [Built In - Eka Robotics Jobs](https://builtin.com/company/eka-robotics/jobs)
5. [Ashby - Eka Robotics Careers](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/ekarobotics)

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