---
title: 'Founding Autonomy Engineer at stratarobot.com'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-autonomy-engineer-stratarobot-com-sunnyvale-mnrxq2mz96cm'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Founding Autonomy Engineer at stratarobot.com

- **Company:** stratarobot.com
- **Location:** Sunnyvale, CA
- **Compensation:** $100k–$180k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-05-04
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/stratarobot-com/am9icG9zdDre9vI9wBPueG0v9YefOZ_f

## Job description

Company Description Heavy infrastructure cannot be built fast enough to fulfill the promises of American reindustrialization. With labor availability tightening and the workforce aging, construction faces a multi-trillion-dollar execution gap over the next decade. Backed by Founders Fund and others, the team is developing robots for outdoor, high-payload job site work with a focus on immediate deployment and autonomy that delivers value immediately. We’re partnering with the largest heavy construction firms to put robots on sites immediately, building hardware, data, and commercial moats to bring end-to-end autonomy to construction.

## Role Description

We are looking for a Founding Autonomy Engineer to help design and scale the autonomy stack for Strata’s robotic platform. This role focuses on building a robust and extensible autonomy system, shaping how perception, planning, and control components integrate and operate together. You will work across system design and real-world deployment to identify failure modes, improve observability, and ensure the system remains reliable and scalable. You will help design and build systems that allow the autonomy stack to incorporate learned models and leverage simulation for faster iteration and more complex tasks. This role requires experience solving complex problems and building systems that are reliable and scalable in real-world environments.

## Key Responsibilities

- Evolve and improve the autonomy system, shaping how perception, planning, and control components integrate and operate together.
- Make system design decisions that ensure the autonomy stack remains robust and scalable, and can reliably incorporate learned models into real-world deployments.
- Identify and resolve system-level issues in real-world deployments, including failures across sensing, state estimation, planning, and control.
- Define and improve interfaces and data flow across perception, planning, and control to ensure clean integration and maintainability.
- Develop and maintain simulation environments and workflows (MuJoCo, Gazebo, Isaac Sim, or similar) to support testing, validation, and development of new capabilities.
- Build systems to support data collection, evaluation, and iteration for learned models deployed in the autonomy stack.
- Improve perception pipelines, including sensor calibration, synchronization, and integration of camera and point cloud data to support more advanced autonomy capabilities.
- Define and improve testing and validation workflows for autonomy behaviors in both simulation and real-world environments.
- Improve system robustness through better handling of noise, uncertainty, and real-world variability.
- Build and deploy manipulation systems that enable robots to reliably move materials in real-world environments.

## Qualifications

- Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
- Strong hands-on experience building manipulation systems for physical robots, not just simulation environments.
- Proficiency in Python and C++ for robotics software development.
- Experience with ROS2 and common robotics tooling for integration, visualization, and debugging.
- Familiarity with manipulation and perception frameworks such as MoveIt, OpenCV, PCL, and related tools.
- Experience integrating and calibrating cameras or depth sensors for robotics applications.
- Strong understanding of motion planning, kinematics, and control.
- Ability to debug full-stack manipulation problems across sensing, estimation, planning, controls, and hardware behavior.
- Comfort working directly on robotic systems in fast iteration loops involving bench testing, system bring-up, and field testing.
- Experience with logging, replay, and debugging workflows using tools such as RViz and rosbag.
- Strong engineering judgment and the ability to choose practical, robust solutions that work under real deployment constraints.

## About stratarobot.com

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Strata Robotics is building an autonomous robotics platform for outdoor construction environments and heavy payloads, designed to address labor shortages and the execution gap in infrastructure development.
- **Entity Type**: Private (early-stage, funding not publicly disclosed)
- **Headquarters**: Sunnyvale, California, USA
- **Founded**: Not publicly available (recent startup, likely 2024–2025)
- **Founders**: Eric Zhou (CEO and Founder), Alex Mason (CTO and Co-founder)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Construction robotics / autonomous heavy equipment
- Target customers: Large heavy construction firms, infrastructure and energy operators (B2B, enterprise)
- Mission: To bring end-to-end autonomy to construction, enabling faster and safer infrastructure development despite a shrinking workforce.

## Products & Services
- **Strata Robotics Platform**: An integrated system of rugged mobility robots, fleet intelligence software, and foundation model integration. The platform is designed for outdoor job sites, handling heavy payloads (multi-ton) with autonomous planning and real-time oversight. The current focus is a V1 material handling robot.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: Total funding not disclosed; headcount of ~3 employees on LinkedIn (with 50% monthly growth)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Partnering with "the largest heavy construction firms" (names not specified); talent sourced from MIT LIDS and SpaceX
- **Growth Signals**: Early-stage but actively hiring for founding roles (Autonomy Engineer, Field Deployment Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Head of Business Development). Moving from development to active job site pilots with EPC partners.

## Competitive Advantages
- Purpose-built for outdoor, unstructured environments (not humanoids or indoor robots)
- Heavy payload capacity (multi-ton) for real construction tasks
- Immediate deployment focus – partnering with firms to put robots on sites now, building data and commercial moats
- Hardware, data, and systems designed for end-to-end autonomy, not just single-task robots

## Strategic Focus
- Iterating from V1 material handling robot toward full autonomy across construction, infrastructure, and energy operations
- Deepening partnerships with heavy construction firms to scale real-world deployments
- Building a foundation model layer trained on real job site data to accelerate learning and adaptability

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: 0→1 environment with direct influence on robot architecture and field deployment. Engineers own subsystems end-to-end (from hand calcs to vendor sourcing to test).
- **Work Policy**: Hybrid or in-office based in Sunnyvale, CA (roles listed as "In-Office" or "Hybrid").
- **Notable Perks**: Work directly with founding team; front-row seat to deploying robotics on real job sites; hands-on with heavy equipment, hydraulics, and outdoor testing.
- **Engineering Culture**: First-principles design, real-world survival testing, and a focus on practical, scalable hardware over hype.

## Sources
1. [stratarobot.com](https://www.stratarobot.com/)
2. [stratarobot.com/careers](https://www.stratarobot.com/careers)
3. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/strata-robotics)
4. [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/strata-robotics)
5. [jobs.gem.com](https://jobs.gem.com/stratarobot-com)

## Other roles at stratarobot.com

- [Founding Mechanical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-mechanical-engineer-stratarobot-com-sunnyvale-cxzb53j39wbw) — Sunnyvale, CA
- [Mechanical Engineer Intern - Mechanism and Structures Design (Fall 2026)](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-engineer-intern-mechanism-and-structures-design-fall-2026-fhw8ctyx24hz) — Sunnyvale, CA