---
title: 'Physical AI Engineer at Civ Robotics'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/physical-ai-engineer-civ-robotics-san-francisco-k008jscagg5q'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-17'
---

# Physical AI Engineer at Civ Robotics

- **Company:** Civ Robotics
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-02
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-17
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/civrobotics-com/am9icG9zdDq0RuTjoUcO-DomeUfOWoJB

## Job description

## About the Company

Civ Robotics is on a mission to automate repetitive tasks within the $3 trillion infrastructure construction industry. We’re dedicated to bridging the workforce gap and accelerating the development of essential infrastructure projects. At the core of our mission is our innovative technology in robotics and autonomous navigation. With over 100 robots deployed and operating across construction sites worldwide, we pride ourselves in ushering in the next generation of construction layout tools for solar, civil, land surveying, road striping, and general contracting. Our technology is engineered from the ground up to make our customers’ projects more precise, simple, and efficient than ever before. Join us and become an integral member of our dynamic team, leading the charge in pioneering construction robotics innovation!

## About the Role

You’ll explore, prototype, and deploy new approaches to intelligence on real robots. That could mean:

- Building learning-based perception and vision systems for unstructured outdoor environments
- Exploring Vision-Language-Action models, foundation models, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and learned world models
- Creating ways for robots to learn from demonstrations, operators, previous missions, and fleet data
- Combining classical robotics with modern machine learning rather than treating them as competing philosophies
- Developing models for scene understanding, terrain understanding, object detection, segmentation, localization, manipulation, and autonomous behavior
- Finding ways to turn large amounts of robot sensor data into useful training data
- Building data collection, evaluation, replay, and training pipelines for physical AI
- Taking recent research and figuring out what actually works on a robot
- Designing experiments, testing them in simulation, and then getting outside and putting them on a machine
- Working closely with autonomy, controls, embedded, mechanical, and product engineers
- Helping define the longer-term Physical AI architecture for our robots and fleet

At Staff level, you'll also help identify what we should be working on next - not just execute an existing roadmap.

## What we're looking for

You have deep experience in some combination of:

- Machine learning / deep learning
- Computer vision
- Robotics and autonomous systems
- C++ and Python
- PyTorch or similar ML frameworks
- ROS / ROS2
- Real-world sensor data: cameras, LiDAR, GNSS, IMU, or similar
- Training, evaluating, and deploying models on real systems

But more importantly, you know how to make things work outside the lab. You understand that a model running once in a notebook is very different from a model running every day on a robot. You care about latency, compute, bad sensors, weird edge cases, changing environments, debugging, and the thousand small details between a good idea and a working machine.

You might be a great fit if

- You read new robotics and AI papers and immediately want to try them.
- You have side projects involving robots, cameras, drones, arms, cars, embedded systems, or strange pieces of hardware you probably didn't need to buy.
- You enjoy moving between research code and a robot with a wrench next to it.
- You're comfortable questioning the current approach and saying, “There might be a completely different way to solve this.”
- You don't divide the world into “AI people” and “robotics people.”
- And when something finally works on a 10,000-pound machine in the real world, that feels considerably more exciting than improving a benchmark by another 1%.

Bonus points Experience with any of the following is useful, but not required:

- Vision-Language Models / Vision-Language-Action models
- Imitation learning or reinforcement learning
- Robot foundation models
- 3D perception
- Neural rendering / NeRF / Gaussian Splatting
- Self-supervised or unsupervised learning
- Synthetic data and simulation
- NVIDIA Jetson / TensorRT / edge inference
- Isaac Sim or other robotics simulators
- Large-scale robotics datasets
- Learning from teleoperation or human demonstrations
- Heavy equipment, autonomous vehicles, agricultural robots, mining, construction, or other outdoor robotics

## Why Civ Robotics

We have something that is still rare in Physical AI: Real robots, doing real work, generating real data. Our machines are deployed in environments where autonomy creates immediate economic value. That gives us the opportunity to close the loop between deployment, data, learning, and improvement. You'll be able to build something, put it on a robot, test it in the field, learn from it, and make the next version better. We're looking for someone who wants to help figure out what the next generation of real-world robots should look like — and then build it.

## Benefits & Perks

- Comprehensive healthcare coverage (medical, dental, vision) for you and your family.
- Competitive salary with growth potential.
- Equity options in a fast-growing robotics company.

## About Civ Robotics

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Civ Robotics builds rugged, all-terrain robotic layout systems that automate construction staking and material placement for solar farms, infrastructure, and civil engineering projects.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed/Series unknown; $17.5M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States (with an office in Tel Aviv, Israel) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/civdrone)
- **Founded**: 2018 [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/civdrone)
- **Founders**: Tom Yeshurun (CEO) and Liav Muler (COO) [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/civrobotics)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Construction robotics – specifically automated layout and surveying for solar farms, earthwork, road striping, and general contracting.
- **Target customers**: B2B – EPCs (engineering, procurement, construction firms), civil engineering contractors, land surveyors, and general contractors.
- **Mission/purpose**: To solve critical labor shortages on construction sites by making layout faster, safer, and accessible to anyone (no surveying license required) [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/).

## Products & Services
- **CivDot**: A rugged robotic layout machine for general construction staking, topographic surveying, and mapping. Marks up to 3,000 points/day with 1/10’ (30 mm) accuracy. Uses RTK GNSS and works with any base station (Trimble, Leica, Topcon, NTRIP) [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/faq).
- **CivDot+**: A higher-precision variant with laser-guided accuracy down to 3/100’ (8 mm). Ideal for pile driving, road markings, and tight-tolerance foundation work [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/faq).
- **CivDot Mini**: A compact, spray-paint marking robot designed for parking lot striping, roadway layout, and airport runway markings. Automates up to 17 miles of lines per day with sub-inch (2 cm) accuracy [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/faq).
- **CivNav**: A machine-mounted navigation system that guides operators to place piles and PV modules directly from blueprints. Can eliminate physical layout when used with GPS-enabled pile drivers [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/faq).
- **CivPlan**: Planning software for importing CSV/DXF files and defining missions.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue of ~$9M (latest estimate) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/civdrone). Total funding of $17.5M across 14 rounds [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/civdrone).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Trimble Inc. (strategic investment in 2022), ff Venture Capital, Drone Fund, Construction Startup Competition grant [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/faq) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/civdrone).
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 52.2% YoY to 28 employees; 3 active job postings (+200% YoY); deployed on over 20 GW of solar farm projects; marked over 10 million coordinates [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/) [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/civrobotics).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Speed**: One operator can mark 1,000–5,000 points/day vs. 200–450 with a traditional surveying crew (up to 8× faster) [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/).
- **Ease of use**: No prior surveying experience required – a one-day on-site training is sufficient [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/faq).
- **Ruggedness**: IP65 weather resistance, 10” ground clearance, operates on slopes up to 30°, 10-hour battery life [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/faq).
- **Open compatibility**: Works with all major GNSS brands (Trimble, Leica, Topcon) and NTRIP networks, avoiding vendor lock-in [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/faq).
- **Validation system**: Robot validates position accuracy before marking, ensuring 3/100’ or 1/10’ tolerances are met [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/faq).

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Expanding deployments in large-scale solar and renewable energy projects; growing the product line (CivNav for material distribution); scaling the workforce (especially in field operations and engineering) [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/careers).
- **Direction**: Replace manual surveying crews with autonomous robotic systems that can be operated by general labor, reducing costs and improving safety on construction sites.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Small, fast-growing team (28 people) with a hands-on, impact-driven environment. Employees are involved in shaping product development from day one [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/careers).
- **Work model**: Mix of in-office (San Francisco) and hybrid (Austin, TX) roles. Engineering and operations roles are primarily in-office [civrobotics.com](https://www.civrobotics.com/careers).
- **Perks & engineering culture**: Work on cutting-edge construction robotics used on real solar farms and infrastructure projects. Cross-functional collaboration between robotics, software, and field operations. Offices in San Francisco (HQ) and Tel Aviv.
- **Open roles** (as of search): System Integration Engineer, Sales Development Representative, Robotics Operations Specialist [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/civrobotics).

## Sources
1. [Civ Robotics Careers Page](https://www.civrobotics.com/careers)
2. [Civ Robotics Official Website](https://www.civrobotics.com/)
3. [CB Insights Company Profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/civdrone)
4. [Civ Robotics LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/company/civrobotics)
5. [Civ Robotics FAQ](https://www.civrobotics.com/faq)

## Other roles at Civ Robotics

- [Office & Operations Coordinator (Part-Time)](https://feeny.ai/job/office-operations-coordinator-part-time-civ-robotics-san-francisco-rhb60gk2w3p5) — San Francisco, CA
- [Robotics Software Developer](https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-software-developer-civ-robotics-san-francisco-x8gyphc14nsc) — San Francisco, CA
- [Geospatial Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/geospatial-manager-civ-robotics-austin-fzehzq9qmkk9) — Austin, TX
- [Sales Engineer (Mid West)](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-engineer-mid-west-civ-robotics-united-states-ns23jy2ad9cj) — United States
- [Sales Engineer (TX)](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-engineer-tx-civ-robotics-texas-bwbfwfw22rgs) — Texas
- [Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/quality-assurance-qa-engineer-civ-robotics-san-francisco-ak3zp3zrafx2) — San Francisco, CA