---
title: 'Machine Learning Engineer at Ultra'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-ultra-brooklyn-2xerhaw0t8ye'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Machine Learning Engineer at Ultra

- **Company:** Ultra
- **Location:** Brooklyn, NY
- **Compensation:** $175k–$250k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2025-12-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/ultra/am9icG9zdDqcPil6ahIjrkQ1KLk3z6tH

## Job description

## Overview

We're seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to join our NYC-based team (we are an in-person company), and own our ML infrastructure and data systems. As our robots scale, so does the volume of data we collect—we need someone who can build the systems to ingest, process, and serve petabytes of multimodal data for training our neural network policies. We are an early stage company moving very fast in a rapidly growing space, and welcome people from any background as long as you're excited to join our mission, drive immediate impact, and create a future where automation is accessible to all.

## What You'll Do

- Own our data platform and scale it to ingest large amounts of video streams and make them available for training in real time
- Own our ML infrastructure stack end-to-end, including distributed training, experiment tracking, and cluster management
- Build out data management systems and high-performance data access layers on top of PB+ scale multimodal data
- Collaborate with the rest of our research team on designing and running experiments as we rapidly improve our policies’ capabilities
- Maintain high availability and reliability of critical infrastructure

## Who You Are

- You have deep experience building and operating large-scale data systems (PB+ scale), ideally in domains like autonomous vehicles or robotics
- You're comfortable with real-time processing, streaming, and event-driven systems
- You have built deep learning training and inference systems at scale
- You thrive in a high-trust, high-autonomy environment. You don't need to be micromanaged on what the top priorities are at any given moment
- You're hungry for impact and personal growth, and like to have fun in the pursuit
- Deeply passionate about robotics and physical AI

Bonus Points

- Experience working on large-scale autonomous vehicles datasets or similar robotics domains
- Hands-on experience with distributed ML training at scale (1000+ GPU hours)
- Familiarity with video codecs, compression, and efficient video storage/retrieval systems
- Experience with reinforcement learning, imitation learning, or VLA model training pipelines
- Experience working with hardware systems in a production environment

## About Ultra

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Ultra builds practical, general-purpose industrial AI robots that automate repetitive warehouse tasks like packing, sorting, and kitting, with zero integration and rapid deployment.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage; $625K total funding)
- **Headquarters**: New York, NY, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Jon Miller Schwartz (CEO), Max Friefeld (COO), Chetan Parthiban (Co-Founder & Chief Scientist), Oliver Ortlieb (Co-Founder & CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Robotics Engineering / Industrial Automation
- **Target customers**: B2B – warehouses, fulfillment centers, and logistics operators (enterprise and SMB)
- **Mission or purpose**: To deploy practical, general-purpose robots that generate immediate ROI by handling repetitive, high‑volume work, and to scale intelligence through real‑world data.

## Products & Services
- **[Operator](https://www.ultra.tech/)**: A stationary industrial AI robot designed for e‑commerce order packaging, sorting, and kitting. It operates up to 24 hours a day, requires no fixed infrastructure, installs in hours, and covers a 5×5 ft footprint with a 10 ft vertical reach. The robot learns new tasks from example data and improves fleet‑wide as more units are deployed.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of $625K (Seed: $125K in Aug 2024; Pre‑Seed: $500K in Sep 2024 led by Y Combinator)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (lead investor), three additional investors in Pre‑Seed round
- **Growth Signals**: 14 total employees (as of early 2025), 19 employees (latest) – **333% YoY headcount growth**; robots already deployed in real warehouses generating revenue and data; launched the Operator robot in April 2026 with 184 LinkedIn reactions; actively hiring across engineering, research, deployment, and people operations.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Zero‑integration deployment**: Robots can be rolled in, plugged in, and turned on within hours – no expensive infrastructure or lengthy integration.
- **Stationary, safe design**: No tipping risk, no battery swaps, no charging breaks – designed for continuous operation in real warehouse conditions.
- **AI trained with examples**: Uses neural nets trained on teleoperation data (≈2 hours) to learn new tasks, enabling rapid adaptation to variable items and changing workflows.
- **Fleet learning**: Every deployed robot feeds data back to improve the entire fleet – a data‑scale moat that compounds with more deployments.

## Strategic Focus
- Rapidly scale deployments across the US in 2025‑2026, building on proven field traction.
- Continue improving robot foundation models for faster, more robust task learning and execution.
- Expand from e‑commerce packaging into adjacent warehouse workflows (e.g., kitting, returns).
- Grow the team (targeting engineering, research, deployment, and people functions) to support production scaling.

## Why Work Here
- **Early‑stage impact**: Join a YC‑backed startup founded by three‑time entrepreneurs (previously founded Layer By Layer, Voodoo Manufacturing) with a decade of collaboration.
- **Fast‑paced, hands‑on culture**: Engineers and researchers directly own firmware, hardware, ML models, and deployment – from design to field support.
- **Real‑world robotics**: Work on robots that are already generating revenue in customer warehouses, not just lab prototypes.
- **Growth trajectory**: 333% headcount growth in the past year, with ambitious plans to scale from 19 to hundreds of employees.
- **Location & flexibility**: Based in New York City; roles span HQ (assembly, testing, R&D) and field deployment across the US.
- **Open roles** (as of early 2026): Robotics Firmware Engineer, Robotics Hardware Engineer, Data Operations Lead, Research Scientist, Product Engineer, Deployment Engineer, Head of People – offering broad ownership and career growth.

## Sources
1. [ultra.tech](https://www.ultra.tech/)
2. [Y Combinator – Ultra](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ultra)
3. [Built In – Ultra Company Profile](https://builtin.com/company/ultra-ultra-tech)
4. [Built In – Ultra Jobs](https://builtin.com/company/ultra-ultra-tech/jobs)
5. [LinkedIn – Ultra](https://www.linkedin.com/company/ultraroboticsco)

## Other roles at Ultra

- [Senior Software Infrastructure Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-infrastructure-engineer-ultra-brooklyn-cag4a9js5h01) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Product Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/product-engineer-ultra-brooklyn-292bdydcv44s) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Research Scientist / Research Engineer (Intern)](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-research-engineer-intern-ultra-brooklyn-0t1bvtfpqw94) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Head of Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-marketing-ultra-brooklyn-rarz21rtmbav) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Head of Customer Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-customer-operations-ultra-brooklyn-yjsm4ykqs5f5) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Data Operations Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/data-operations-associate-ultra-brooklyn-fwe9qb9nk4xe) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Head of People](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-people-ultra-brooklyn-g8frrbpfpq6d) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Founding Product Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-product-manager-ultra-brooklyn-4tb57rm0cymn) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Head of Finance](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-finance-ultra-brooklyn-rtaykzbf200b) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Robotics Firmware Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-firmware-engineer-ultra-brooklyn-vsb5dh914ger) — Brooklyn, NY