--- title: 'Senior Product Designer at Watney' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-designer-watney-san-francisco-m5mpddya5vca' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-31' --- # Senior Product Designer at Watney - **Company:** Watney - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-10-29 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-31 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/watney/cc6a2d30-f6e3-4572-be90-5afbf7be73d0 ## Job description ## Our Mission Expand human ambition in the physical world. Critical infrastructure is constrained by labor shortages, hazardous working conditions, and operational complexity. Watney builds and deploys autonomous robotic systems that increase the speed and capacity of buildout, starting with data centers. At Watney, product designers shape how people interact with our robots and the systems behind them. The work spans the controls a pilot uses to operate a robot, the tools an engineer uses to explore data, and the applications a team uses to coordinate work across a fleet. You’ll work closely with engineers and operators to understand complex workflows and make them intuitive. That means thinking deeply about what people need to see, understand, and control, and then carrying those decisions through to the details of an interface. Your work will cross software and physical interactions, from teleoperation controls to scheduling and task management. ## What You’ll Do - Work with teleoperators, field operators, and engineers to understand where their tools fall short and rethink how they could work. - Design interfaces for teleoperation, data exploration, annotation, and fleet coordination, supporting a deployed fleet scaling to thousands of robots next year. - Build and test prototypes with the people using these tools, from data annotators and robotics researchers to fleet managers. - Work with engineers to ship designs and refine them as they’re used in the field. You May Be a Good Fit If You: - Have designed tools that make complex systems easier to understand and work with. Developer tools, CAD, creative software, and hardware interfaces are examples of relevant experience. - Get curious about unfamiliar technical domains and learn enough to question how things should work. - Think carefully about interaction, information hierarchy, and feedback, and bring craft to the details. - Enjoy working closely with engineers and designing for technical users. The ability to build your own prototypes in code is a bonus, not a requirement. We’re committed to building a diverse, inclusive team. At Watney Robotics, we welcome people of all backgrounds and identities, and we make hiring decisions based on skills, experience, and potential. If you’re passionate about robotics but don’t meet every requirement, we still encourage you to apply! Curious to learn more? Follow us here on [X](https://x.com/watneyrobotics/) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/watneyrobotics/about/) ## About Watney ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Develops autonomous robotics systems to operate datacenter and supercomputing infrastructure, partnering with hyperscalers to accelerate compute scaling. - **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2024 - **Founders**: Ryan Gannon (Co-Founder), Sean Cheong (Co-Founder) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Robotics Engineering / Datacenter Infrastructure Automation - **Target customers**: Hyperscale cloud providers and large-scale data center operators (Enterprise B2B) - **Mission or purpose statement**: “Deploy an abundant, intelligent workforce” by enabling the growth of critical infrastructure through autonomous robots. ## Products & Services - **Autonomous Datacenter Robotics Platform**: A fleet of autonomous robots designed for datacenter buildout and breakfix operations. The system handles physical tasks such as server installation, cable management, maintenance, and repair, reducing human labor and accelerating deployment timelines. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available - **Key Metric** (Private): **$21.0M in total funding** (Seed round closed May 30, 2025) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Conviction, Abstract, A* (A-star). Partners with the world’s largest hyperscalers (names not disclosed). - **Growth Signals**: - Headcount grew **183.3% year-over-year** to 11 employees (as of mid-2026) - Monthly headcount growth of **+6.2%** - Active job postings rose **+28.6% month-over-month** and **+350% quarter-over-quarter** - Currently hiring for 9 roles spanning engineering, operations, and strategy ## Competitive Advantages - **Deep domain focus**: Solely dedicated to datacenter and supercomputing infrastructure – a narrow, high-stakes vertical with massive scaling demand. - **Elite founding team**: Includes former GSM for iPhone, former founding engineer at Worldcoin, and a builder of the world’s fastest EV racecar (ETH Zurich). - **Early partnerships with hyperscalers**: Already working with the largest cloud providers, providing critical validation and a clear path to production. - **Full-stack ownership**: Company is moving from prototype to production fleets, offering engineers end-to-end impact from hardware to software. ## Strategic Focus - **Scale from prototype to production fleets**: Transitioning from small-scale deployments to large autonomous fleets. - **Deepen hyperscaler partnerships**: Expand contracts and joint development roadmaps with major cloud providers. - **Grow engineering and operations teams**: Aggressively hiring across robotics, software, facilities management, and deployment strategy to support production scaling. ## Why Work Here - **In-Office culture**: All roles are based in San Francisco (HQ); the company emphasizes in-person collaboration. - **Ground-floor opportunity**: With outsized ownership and visibility, employees shape the “rollout playbook” for a category-defining robotics company. - **Technical challenge**: Work on real systems that combine robotics, AI, hardware, and infrastructure at scale. - **Notable peers**: Colleagues include alumni from Scale AI, Amazon Web Services, Tools for Humanity, Warburg Pincus, and the US Army Corps of Engineers. - **Growth trajectory**: A very young company (founded 2024) with rapid hiring and clear product-market fit, ideal for early-stage career builders. ## Sources 1. [watneyrobotics.com](https://watneyrobotics.com/) 2. [linkedin.com/company/watneyrobotics](https://www.linkedin.com/company/watneyrobotics) 3. [builtin.com/company/watney-robotics-inc](https://builtin.com/company/watney-robotics-inc) 4. [startups.gallery/companies/watney](https://startups.gallery/companies/watney) ## Other roles at Watney - [Senior Software Engineer - Tools](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-tools-watney-san-francisco-6qvk06g0vr02) — San Francisco, CA - [Staff Firmware Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-firmware-engineer-watney-san-francisco-77pan28rddj1) — San Francisco, CA - [Staff Software Engineer - Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-infrastructure-watney-san-francisco-2r2gk3w7qvkb) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Manufacturing Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manufacturing-engineer-watney-san-francisco-e11y199wtagm) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Mechanical Engineer - Robotics](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-mechanical-engineer-robotics-watney-san-francisco-tazxw9ea9ds5) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Research Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-research-engineer-watney-san-francisco-kfgw3dy7m4eb) — San Francisco, CA - [Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-watney-san-francisco-k9y1d6h7xdnv) — San Francisco, CA - [Staff Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-machine-learning-engineer-watney-san-francisco-t8stgn4p7ad8) — San Francisco, CA - [Program Manager, Teleoperations](https://feeny.ai/job/program-manager-teleoperations-watney-san-francisco-c0zedeb0sc5r) — San Francisco, CA - [Staff Program Manager, Teleoperations](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-program-manager-teleoperations-watney-san-francisco-w7qah1bzn6xd) — San Francisco, CA