--- title: 'Staff Software Engineer - Infrastructure at Watney' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-infrastructure-watney-san-francisco-2r2gk3w7qvkb' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-17' --- # Staff Software Engineer - Infrastructure at Watney - **Company:** Watney - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-10-17 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-17 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/watney/004cd31f-941d-4d5b-b92a-c5967050856a ## 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, infrastructure engineers keep a fleet of robots in the field connected and safe to change. The robots do production work at customer sites and stream real-time video from their cameras. The same infrastructure carries that video and data to our ML team and the rest of engineering. Changing software on robots that are doing real work, over customer networks we do not control, is a problem the field has not settled: how a change reaches the fleet safely, and how video and data keep moving when a network fails. Our software engineers run this infrastructure today alongside the robot software. You will partner with them, own it full time, and decide what a safe release looks like. Every robot in the field depends on that answer. At Staff, you lead the infrastructure changes that cross teams. ## What You’ll Do - Own networking, remote access, and the real-time video pipelines for the fleet. - Own CI, observability, and alerting for the fleet and the services behind it. - Build the release gate and rollout process for the fleet, and own the bar a change must clear. - Decide where data lives, how it is kept, and what our infrastructure costs to run. - Lead infrastructure changes with the software engineers who run this infrastructure today, and across the ML and fleet operations teams who depend on it. You May Be a Good Fit If You: - Have led an infrastructure change across several teams, or founded the team that owns one. - Have owned production networking or edge traffic for a large system. - Have migrated a large system in stages, through breaking changes, without breaking its users. - Have owned observability and alerting for a production system. - Have built tooling that other engineers rely on every day. 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 - [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 - [Operations Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/operations-lead-watney-san-francisco-be77taz7js4n) — San Francisco, CA