---
title: 'Robotics Firmware Engineer at Ultra'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-firmware-engineer-ultra-brooklyn-vsb5dh914ger'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-12'
---

# Robotics Firmware Engineer at Ultra

- **Company:** Ultra
- **Location:** Brooklyn, NY
- **Compensation:** $150k–$225k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/ultra/am9icG9zdDpXLx2fKs3C8HxMofruzDOZ

## Job description

## Overview

We’re seeking a Robotics Firmware Engineer to join our NYC-based team (we are an in-person company) to own the hard problems where software meets metal. Our robots run every day in the lab and at customer sites; when joints freeze, buses flake, or safety state is wrong, you are the person who finds the real cause and ships the fix. 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

- 2+ years shipping firmware on real robots or similarly unforgiving embedded systems
- You’re dangerous with LLMs because you know when they're wrong
- Comfortable from scope traces and schematics up through kernel/driver and into application control loops
- You’ve identified, diagnosed, and fixed intermittent failures end-to-end (timing, noise, thermal, state machines)
- You produce production-quality code and can pinch-hit outside pure firmware when the robot needs it
- You can look at a ticket backlog and identify the most important thing to work on next

## What You’ll Do

- Debug and permanently fix HW/SW interface failures that kill uptime (actuators, buses, sensors, recovery paths)
- Tweak all the Linux parameters nobody knows about to get reliable, predictable OS performance
- Help design and implement a safety system with real guarantees for Operator's warehouse work
- Write control interfaces for any new devices we want to onboard (new EEs, cameras, barcode scanners, etc)
- Identify key metrics to monitor for predictive failure signals and overall hardware health

Bonus Points

- MechE/EE experience for designing and manufacturing robotics components including custom PCBs, engineered parts, and more.

## 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

- [Head of Hardware](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-hardware-ultra-brooklyn-dtc2anggdp5p) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Data Operations Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/data-operations-associate-ultra-brooklyn-nnm3pw5a82wx) — Brooklyn, NY
- [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
- [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
- [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
- [Supply Chain and Procurement Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/supply-chain-and-procurement-lead-ultra-brooklyn-p1brfk2ye8wc) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Senior Electrical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-electrical-engineer-ultra-brooklyn-4qzxkbqmyk7r) — Brooklyn, NY