---
title: 'Sustaining Engineering Manager, Robotics at Tutor Intelligence'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sustaining-engineering-manager-robotics-tutor-intelligence-watertown-x07d3dnbq7k6'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-11'
---

# Sustaining Engineering Manager, Robotics at Tutor Intelligence

- **Company:** Tutor Intelligence
- **Location:** Watertown, MA
- **Compensation:** $190k–$300k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-11-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-11
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/tutorintelligence/4f497302-2fe2-43c3-866e-ee2291199d79

## Job description

## About Tutor

We believe robots are the biggest lever we have to making the physical world a better, more affordable place. But robots are a rounding error in our society: nearly nine out of ten American factories and warehouses don’t even have a single robot, and robots have yet to make their way into our homes or places of business. Tutor Intelligence is changing that. Tutor is a robotics research and deployment company, building generally capable robot hardware and artificial intelligence to enable robots to go where no robots have gone before. Sonny is a semi-humanoid robot with frontier dexterity approaching the human form. Cassie does back-breaking work, moving boxes, pallets, and bulk goods for businesses from family-owned manufacturers to some of the largest brands in the world. Tutor robots are manufactured at scale and operate as a network, combining the whole fleet’s learned experience to train ever more capable robot artificial intelligence. Founded at MIT and headquartered in Watertown, MA, our team is full stack: we design and manufacture robot hardware, train our own models, work directly with the smallest and largest end-customers, and maintain our fleet across the United States. We’re a team of researchers, engineers, technicians, operators, and sellers who love building things and solving hard problems. Our mission is grand: robots everywhere, for the common good, raising the standard of living across North America, and then the world. Why Tutor? Whether you’re designing robots, closing deals, running deployments, or creating the processes that help us scale, your work doesn’t sit on a shelf. It shows up on real production floors, making physical work safer and more affordable. Our team of 160+ is driven by curiosity and a genuine love of building. Everyone here takes real ownership, learns fast, and holds a high bar while having each other’s backs. If you love hard problems and creating things that didn’t exist before, you’ll fit right in.

## The Role

Tutor builds robots and runs them in customers' facilities across the country. Once a robot ships, it has to keep working for years, through packaging changes, worn parts, new sites, and software that keeps moving underneath it. We are hiring a Sustaining Engineering Manager to own that. Your team owns the shipping robots as engineering products: the hardware and the software. When a failure shows up in the field, the team finds the root cause, designs the fix, proves it, and gets it onto every robot that needs it, whether that means a part change, a procedure, a firmware release, or a software change. The team also builds the instrumentation and tools that find problems before customers do, and works alongside the field support engineers who see the robots every day. The team writes code, takes apart hardware, and talks to customers directly.

Problems on the list

- A robot fails at the same time every afternoon and the logs do not explain it. Someone has to decide what to measure, write the instrumentation, get it onto the robot, and read the result.
- A failure that turns out to be hardware, proved by a pressure trace and a worn part. The fix involves a supplier, a procedure, and every robot in the field.
- A customer changes their packaging and perception starts missing. The fleet data showed the change two days before they called, but nothing was watching for it.
- A fix that works on the bench and has to be rolled out to robots running production in three states without stopping any of them.

## What You'll Do

- Own the shipping product: Hardware and software changes to robots in the field, from root cause through release
- Run root cause to closure: Decide what to measure, find the cause, prove the fix, and make sure the failure cannot come back
- Build the instrumentation: When the data to explain a failure does not exist, get it onto the robots
- Ship changes safely: Qualify fixes and roll them out to a fleet in production
- Run the team: Hire and manage engineers across hardware and software, and work closely with the field support engineers
- Face customers: Be the engineer a customer talks to when something is wrong, and the one who explains what changed

## What We're Looking For

- You have sustained a shipping electromechanical product: owned changes to it after launch and lived with the consequences
- You understand the whole machine, mechanics, electronics, firmware, and software, well enough to find out which one failed
- You have managed engineers, and you have run a change process without letting it become paperwork
- You are comfortable talking to a customer whose equipment is down
- When something breaks twice, you change the thing that let it break

## Nice to Have

- Robots or other hardware deployed in customers' facilities
- Root cause and corrective action, failure analysis, or reliability engineering
- Field service or support engineering teams
- Fleet software at a company running robots or vehicles in production

## Benefits

- Fully employer-covered health insurance, so you’re protected without the premium.
- A managed 401(k) to help you plan for the future.
- Generous time off: unlimited PTO and all federal holidays off for full-time salaried employees, and 16+ days of accrued paid time off plus 1.5x pay on federal holidays for hourly employees.
- Regular in-office meals and team social events throughout the year.

To apply Along with a résumé, tell us about a failure in a shipping product that you chased to root cause, and what you changed so it would not come back.

## About Our Roles & Titles

At Tutor, we believe great engineers and researchers are defined by what they build and the impact they have — not where they sit in an org chart or what title they have. Therefore, everyone in our R&D org holds the title Member of Technical Staff (MoTS). Our job postings use standard titles so you can find us, but if you join Tutor, you'll be a MoTS — with a level that is determined through the interview process. That also means we hire people, not slots. Work at Tutor evolves every quarter, and we set the expectation of flexibility from day one — it's common for people to start on one thing and shift to another based on where the team needs them most. A high technical bar across the board is what makes that flexibility possible: it's what allows people to contribute meaningfully whatever problem they take on.

## Compensation

The base salary range for this role is $190,000 to $300,000, depending on experience. As Tutor grows, so will our benefits. We’re continuing to invest in ways to support our team at work and beyond. Tutor Intelligence is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applicants from all backgrounds.

## About Tutor Intelligence

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Tutor Intelligence builds AI-powered robot workers for manufacturing and logistics, deploying intelligent physical automation that adapts to dynamic industrial environments.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A, total funding $78.7M)
- **Headquarters**: Watertown, Massachusetts, USA
- **Founded**: 2021 (earliest corporate round)
- **Founders**: Josh Gruenstein (CEO) and Alon Kosowsky-Sachs (Co-Founder)

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Industrial Automation, Logistics & Warehousing
- Target customers: B2B – manufacturing plants, warehouses, 3PLs, and large-scale industrial operations (Enterprise)
- Mission or purpose statement: "To build fundamental AI technology to enable generally capable robot workers and partner with industry to deploy them" – solving the hardest problems in physical machine intelligence.

## Products & Services
- **[Cassie](https://tutorintelligence.com/)**: A purpose-built robot for material handling – palletizing, depalletizing, and case picking. Deployed in days, handles unlimited SKUs, works 24/7 with a simple tablet interface. Pricing starts at $14/hour per robot or per-pick models.
- **[Sonny](https://tutorintelligence.com/)**: A humanoid robot designed for the "messy middle" of manual labor – complex assembly, irregular tasks. Industrial-grade hardware, trained on internet-scale data. Available for deployment starting late 2026.
- **Platform & Fleet Management**: Full B2B logistics workflow automation (replen to picking to palletizing) with per-pick pricing, remote 24/7 support, and continuous AI improvements.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding $78.7M (latest round: $40.5M venture round in June 2025; Series A $34M in December 2025 led by Union Square Ventures and Fundomo)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Union Square Ventures, Fundomo; partners with world’s largest 3PLs and brands (deployed in dozens of factories and warehouses)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 278.8% YoY to 69 employees (as of early 2026); 38 active job postings; monthly job postings up 40.7%; expanding into humanoid robotics with Sonny; offices across US, India, Canada, Portugal, South Africa.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Deployment speed**: Robots are operational "in days" without changes to existing infrastructure – reads pallet specs like human workers.
- **Flexible pricing**: Per-hour ($14/hr) or per-pick models with no contract lock-in, lowering cost of fulfillment by 20%+.
- **AI-first approach**: Robots learn from human interaction in real environments, continuously improving via an intelligence platform.
- **Proven real-world impact**: Already deployed across dozens of facilities for major brands, not just pilots.

## Strategic Focus
- Scale deployments of Cassie across more warehouses and factories.
- Launch Sonny humanoid robot in late 2026 for complex manual tasks.
- Continue advancing physical AI research (founded out of MIT CSAIL) to expand robot capabilities into new industries.
- Grow the fleet and per-pick pricing model to capture more of the B2B logistics workflow.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Fast-paced startup with deep roots in MIT CSAIL research – a blend of cutting-edge AI/robotics and real-world industrial impact.
- **Work model**: On-site in Watertown, MA (employees work from physical offices). Offices also in India, Canada, Portugal, South Africa.
- **Growth**: 278% YoY headcount growth, 38 open roles across engineering, research, sales, and operations – strong upward mobility.
- **Roles**: Robotics engineers, perception engineers, full-stack developers, research scientists, field technicians, account executives, and more.
- **Perks**: Not explicitly listed, but emphasis on 24/7 remote support, always-on AI improvements, and no contract lock-in suggests a team that values reliability and customer success.
- **Engineering culture**: Focus on solving hardest problems in machine intelligence; teams work at the edge of AI, robotics, and operations.

## Sources
1. [tutorintelligence.com](https://tutorintelligence.com/)
2. [tutorintelligence.com/about](https://tutorintelligence.com/about)
3. [LinkedIn Company Page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tutorintelligence)
4. [Built In Boston – Tutor Intelligence](https://www.builtinboston.com/company/tutor-intelligence)

## Other roles at Tutor Intelligence

- [Head of Supply Chain](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-supply-chain-tutor-intelligence-watertown-kjx796725wy0) — Watertown, MA
- [Technical Program Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-program-manager-tutor-intelligence-watertown-xpem2hz6f090) — Watertown, MA
- [Applied AI Engineer, Finance](https://feeny.ai/job/applied-ai-engineer-finance-tutor-intelligence-watertown-nvpngbjbnte7) — Watertown, MA
- [Applied AI Engineer, Go-to-Market](https://feeny.ai/job/applied-ai-engineer-go-to-market-tutor-intelligence-watertown-6da0wadr24yy) — Watertown, MA
- [Engineering Manager, Robotics Software](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-robotics-software-tutor-intelligence-watertown-cqazgy59tzw8) — Watertown, MA
- [Engineering Manager, Robotics Hardware](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-robotics-hardware-tutor-intelligence-watertown-9b7584f6avkp) — Watertown, MA
- [Organizational Effectiveness Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/organizational-effectiveness-lead-tutor-intelligence-watertown-e9898k05vh27) — Watertown, MA
- [HR Compliance & Benefits Administrator](https://feeny.ai/job/hr-compliance-benefits-administrator-tutor-intelligence-watertown-v0qtn3a407bj) — Watertown, MA
- [People Operations Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/people-operations-manager-tutor-intelligence-watertown-k9t9rwe1jx4k) — Watertown, MA
- [Research Scientist, Robotics](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-robotics-tutor-intelligence-san-francisco-jv7mjv43c4v4) — San Francisco, CA