---
title: 'Robotics Application Engineer - Hardware at Ultra'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-application-engineer-hardware-ultra-brooklyn-mptjkt2de1fc'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-09'
---

# Robotics Application Engineer - Hardware at Ultra

- **Company:** Ultra
- **Location:** Brooklyn, NY
- **Compensation:** $110k–$150k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-04-16
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/ultra/am9icG9zdDpI7KpnDaegplY-ipEj86yJ

## Job description

## Overview

We're seeking a Robotics Application Engineer to join our NYC-based team and own the technical journey from the moment a sale closes to the moment a robot goes live in a customer warehouse. You'll be the bridge between our sales and our field support team — gathering requirements, designing and building solutions in our lab to confirm deployment readiness, and handing off a production-ready deployment to our field team.

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.

## Who You Are

- You have a strong foundation in engineering, but also genuinely enjoy working with customers. You get energy from both a great customer conversation and a productive session designing and testing engineering solutions in the lab.
- You're organized and dependable to a fault. You own your timelines, communicate proactively, and the people counting on you always know where things stand.
- You have a knack for understanding how complex systems work — mechanical, electrical, software — and you don't stop digging until you've figured it out.
- You thrive in a high-trust, high-autonomy environment. You don't need to be told what the top priority is — you already know, and you're already on it.

## What You'll Do

- Expand what our robots can do: take on new product types, packaging formats, and tasks, and turn them into proven, repeatable capabilities across the fleet.
- Reconstruct a customer’s environment as needed in our Brooklyn lab: get product samples and set up realistic test scenarios so we know the solution works before we deploy.
- Design clever solutions for new parts of tasks using a mechatronics toolbox: design, 3D print and assemble as needed, and test them on our robots.
- Work side-by-side with our robot pilots to prototype, run timing studies, capture performance videos, and iterate until we’re hitting the customer’s targets.
- Hand off to our field deployment team with everything they need: documented solution, schedule, requirements, and a robot that’s proven in the lab.

Bonus Skills

- Experience with robotic systems, warehouse or fulfillment environments, or industrial automation.
- Familiarity with Linux, networking, or scripting in Python.
- Experience sourcing components like actuators, sensors, cameras, or warehouse hardware.

## 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

- [Product Engineer, AI Enablement](https://feeny.ai/job/product-engineer-ai-enablement-ultra-brooklyn-t0em53cpeqab) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Facilities & Office Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/facilities-office-manager-ultra-brooklyn-xpnsajcqy9v2) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Head of Hardware](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-hardware-ultra-brooklyn-dtc2anggdp5p) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Senior Software Infrastructure Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-infrastructure-engineer-ultra-brooklyn-cag4a9js5h01) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Head of Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-marketing-ultra-brooklyn-rarz21rtmbav) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Head of People](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-people-ultra-brooklyn-g8frrbpfpq6d) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Founding Product](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-product-ultra-brooklyn-4tb57rm0cymn) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Supply Chain and Procurement Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/supply-chain-and-procurement-lead-ultra-brooklyn-p1brfk2ye8wc) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Research Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-ultra-brooklyn-6ke5efe8x5qp) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Head of Pilot Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-pilot-operations-ultra-brooklyn-4w0cmp599g0n) — Brooklyn, NY