---
title: 'Software Engineer - Perception at Watney'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-perception-watney-san-francisco-2jet9z7rsebw'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Software Engineer - Perception at Watney

- **Company:** Watney
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-13
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/watney/2c20d971-43c9-4005-ba96-4759753260f6

## 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.

## ABOUT THE ROLE

At Watney, the perception loop is the critical foundation that allows our robots to operate reliably in unstructured environments. This is an opportunity to build the high-throughput data engines, distributed streaming architectures, and deterministic evaluation platforms that power our entire perception lifecycle from raw physical telemetry to deployed edge models.

We are looking for someone who wants to design and scale the platform layer that orchestrates our core perception workflows, including automated data mining, multimodal ingestion pipelines, and parallelized regression backbones. The ideal candidate is an experienced backend or data infrastructure engineer eager to build the foundational data engine for autonomous fleets.

## WHAT YOU’LL DO

- Own the Perception Data Engine: Architect and optimize scalable off-robot data pipelines capable of ingesting, parsing, and managing petabyte-scale video and sensor streams for auto-annotation and localization tasks.
- Build Continuous Evaluation Infrastructure: Design and implement deterministic simulation, regression testing, and evaluation loops to rigorously benchmark perception performance before edge deployment.
- Scale Annotation & Feature Extraction: Develop high-throughput pipelines that orchestrate multimodal data fusion, automated labeling, and feature extraction to constantly mine high-signal training examples from the field.
- Drive Quality Metrics & Monitoring: Establish end-to-end telemetry systems and observability frameworks to track model regression, data drift, and perception accuracy across live operational environments.

YOU MAY BE A GOOD FIT IF YOU:

- Have experience building high-throughput data platforms, large-scale distributed streaming systems, or infrastructure for autonomous robotics.
- Have a proven track record designing scalable data pipelines and storage solutions tailored for heavy multimodal media formats (high-frame-rate video, unstructured telemetry).
- Bring deep experience building closed-loop testing infrastructure, regression frameworks, or automated metric tracking engines for highly complex, non-deterministic software systems.
- Exhibit a high technical competency in geometric computer vision fundamentals, 3D spatial data handling, or metadata orchestration for machine learning workflows.

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)

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