--- title: 'Physical AI Infrastructure Engineer at Yondu AI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/physical-ai-infrastructure-engineer-yondu-ai-gardena-146q4rtdhntj' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-17' --- # Physical AI Infrastructure Engineer at Yondu AI - **Company:** Yondu AI - **Location:** Gardena, CA - **Compensation:** $100k–$200k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-10-07 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-17 - **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/yondu-ai/am9icG9zdDrIKreh28NVfOlc3YNuWyKo ## Job description Yondu builds software that turns off-the-shelf robots into autonomous warehouse labor. We’re looking for a hands-on engineer to build and improve the tools that connect our hardware, AI models, and real-world operations. Your work will span robot control, teleoperation, data annotation, and prototype hardware testing. You’ll investigate new ideas, measure what works, and turn promising experiments into tested, reusable software that other engineers can build on. As we introduce new hardware, warehouse tasks, and models, you’ll own the development and continued improvement of our R&D tools and experimental systems. You’ll work closely with our AI and production engineers, who will carry validated capabilities through production integration and deployment. ## What you’ll work on - Improve our data annotation pipeline. Clean up existing workflows, improve data validation and labeling tools, and make it easier to turn robot demonstrations and deployment data into useful training datasets. - Maintain and improve teleoperation software. Improve how operator inputs translate into robot behavior, including action smoothing, motion mapping, responsiveness, and debugging tools. - Develop and evaluate manipulation capabilities. Work with inverse kinematics and motion control for new arms, including 7-DoF redundancy, elbow clearance, camera visibility, and compliant grasping. - Test prototype hardware. Write CAN communication and hardware test code for new R&D systems. Evaluate whether AMR base, lift, arm, and gripper interfaces provide the control, feedback, and timing needed for new behaviors. - Make hardware changes easier. Build calibration tools and model input/action adapters that help us move between different arms, grippers, and cameras. - Verify real task outcomes. Work with the AI team to detect whether a task actually succeeded, investigate false success signals, and evaluate rewards against physical results. - Measure what improved. Build repeatable tests that isolate the effects of model, controller, and hardware changes. - Keep R&D work reusable. Bring experimental branches into a shared codebase with clear interfaces, versioned configurations, tests, and documentation so other engineers can reproduce and extend the work. ## What we’re looking for - Strong software engineering skills in Python and C++, with experience writing and debugging code that interacts with physical hardware. - A strong understanding of robotic kinematics, coordinate frames, inverse kinematics, and motion control. - Hands-on experience with robot arms, teleoperation, or related robotic systems. - Experience writing and debugging CAN communication with actuators or other hardware. - The ability to design useful experiments, define success criteria, and diagnose problems across software and hardware. - Good engineering habits: readable code, practical tests, clear documentation, and comfort integrating work across Git branches. - Comfort taking an open-ended problem from an initial prototype to a reliable tool that teammates can use. Helpful experience - Robotics data pipelines, annotation tools, or dataset quality evaluation. - Robot learning, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, or model evaluation. - ROS/ROS 2, robot calibration, redundant manipulators, or force and compliance control. - Experience with cloud providers You’ll have direct ownership of tools that shape how quickly we can test new ideas and bring new robot capabilities into real warehouse workflows. ## About Yondu AI ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Yondu provides drop-in, general-purpose humanoid robots for 3PL warehouses to automate high-turnover labor with a fast, ROI-positive, brownfield deployment. - **Entity Type**: Private (seed stage, Y Combinator W24) - **Headquarters**: Gardena, California, USA - **Founded**: 2023 (Dec 2023 founded at MIT, operational by 2024) - **Founders**: Michael Chen (CEO) and Tahmid Jamal (CTO) ## Core Business - Primary industry: Warehouse automation, logistics robotics, embodied AI. - Target customers: Mid-sized 3PL (third-party logistics) warehouses (B2B, SMB to enterprise). - Mission: Revolutionizing physical labor by building the robot workforce of the future, empowering businesses to lower operating costs, eliminate turnover, and increase efficiency. ## Products & Services - **Humanoid Robots + Teleoperation System (ULTRON)**: A low-latency remote teleoperation system that puts robots to work immediately in customer operations, collecting data for autonomy. - **Warehouse Management Software (WMS) Integration**: Routes orders from the warehouse WMS to Yondu’s platform, instructing robots where to go and what to pick. - **Autonomy Stack (YGM – Yondu General Manipulation)**: A manipulation policy that gradually takes over picking and placing tasks, learning from teleoperation data to drive toward full autonomy. - **Brownfield Bin-Picking Solution**: The first fully automated brownfield bin-picking system that works within existing warehouse layouts without costly infrastructure changes. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed. - **Key Metric**: Total funding raised – seed round closed in May 2024 after YC W24 cohort; amount undisclosed. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator; design partnership and pilot contract with Shipbots (a major West Coast 3PL). - **Growth Signals**: Founded Dec 2023 at MIT; participated in PROD 3.0 and YC W24 cohorts; opened HQ in Gardena, CA (June 2025); demonstrated comprehensive teleoperated bin-picking system (Sep 2025); landed first pilot contract; headcount growing with multiple founding engineers and robot operators. ## Competitive Advantages - **Brownfield-first approach**: No need for new infrastructure or retrofits – robots adapt to existing warehouse layouts and processes. - **Affordable price point**: Mid-sized warehouses can afford automation; claims to cut labor costs by up to 75%. - **Data flywheel**: Teleoperation (ULTRON) enables immediate value while collecting real-world data to train autonomy (YGM), creating a self-improving system. - **Full-stack robotics**: In-house teleoperation, WMS integration, and manipulation stack – a platform-application model scalable to other tasks (decanting, replenishment, packing). ## Strategic Focus - Current priorities include scaling the Shipbots partnership, proving ROI in live warehouse operations, expanding the robot’s task repertoire beyond bin-picking, and building a foundation model for general-purpose manipulation. - Long-term vision: Become the platform for any brownfield robotics automation, enabling other companies to automate any task with any robot. ## Why Work Here - **Team & Culture**: Led by two MIT co-founders; strong research talent (MIT CSAIL Postdoc, Georgia Tech PhD, industry veterans in RL/teleoperation). Culture emphasizes continuous learning, keeping up with SOTA research, and tackling one of the hardest problems in robot learning. - **Compensation & Benefits**: 401(k) matching (100% of first 3%, 50% of next 2%); comprehensive medical/dental (100% premiums covered for employee and dependents); unlimited PTO plus dedicated sick leave. - **Work Environment**: Based in Los Angeles (Gardena) – hands-on, in-person collaboration with local customers; roles include robotics software, mechatronics, and business development. - **Growth Opportunity**: Early-stage startup with a chance to shape the product and technology from the ground up, working on real-world embodied AI deployments. ## Sources 1. [yondu.ai](https://www.yondu.ai/) 2. [yondu.ai/about](https://www.yondu.ai/about) 3. [yondu.ai/careers](https://www.yondu.ai/careers) 4. [ycombinator.com/companies/yondu](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/yondu) 5. [ycombinator.com/companies/yondu/jobs](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/yondu/jobs) ## Other roles at Yondu AI - [Robot SWE](https://feeny.ai/job/robot-swe-yondu-ai-gardena-1kny3bb90xnh) — Gardena, CA - [Robotics Hardware Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-hardware-engineer-yondu-ai-gardena-pyqe3jdnrajk) — Gardena, CA - [Summer Robotics Hardware Intern (Copy)](https://feeny.ai/job/summer-robotics-hardware-intern-copy-yondu-ai-gardena-rtmmqv94a38g) — Gardena, CA - [Summer Robotics Hardware Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/summer-robotics-hardware-intern-yondu-ai-gardena-xym7b8rebrb4) — Gardena, CA - [Founding Business Development Representative, Robotics](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-business-development-representative-robotics-yondu-ai-gardena-nn7kxtde6ef8) — Gardena, CA - [Senior Robotics Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-robotics-engineer-yondu-ai-gardena-r9phjzqqd7sg) — Gardena, CA