---
title: 'Technical Program Manager, Data & Autonomy at Ultra'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/technical-program-manager-data-autonomy-ultra-brooklyn-dhe710a88c3r'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-12'
---

# Technical Program Manager, Data & Autonomy at Ultra

- **Company:** Ultra
- **Location:** Brooklyn, NY
- **Compensation:** $150k–$250k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-28
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/ultra/am9icG9zdDrnu-EnrHAuxy48tst4pSMF

## Job description

## About the role

You will own the programs that turn research priorities into usable robotics datasets, working with ML researchers, robotics engineers, data engineers, and operations teams to determine what data we need, translate those requirements into collection and annotation programs, and ensure the resulting datasets are delivered with the required quality, coverage, and timing. This is a technically demanding program role. You will not directly build every tool or run every collection shift, but you will understand the complete data lifecycle and drive coordinated execution across the teams responsible for it.

## What you’ll do

- Operationalize the execution of the collection, annotation, validation, and management of our data
- Translate model-training and evaluation priorities into concrete data requirements, task definitions, collection plans, and acceptance criteria.
- Own the roadmap and delivery plan for major robotics data programs.
- Continually improve our process around collecting data and running evals
- Build internal tools and software to streamline and make our process more efficient

## Who You Are

- You have significant experience in technical program management, ML operations, robotics, autonomy, data platforms, or a related technical field.
- You have managed complex programs spanning research, software, hardware, and operations.
- You understand the fundamentals of ML training data, evaluation, dataset quality, and experimentation.
- You communicate clearly in technical specifications, program reviews, and executive updates.
- You thrive in an environment where requirements and priorities change quickly.
- You are comfortable getting your hands dirty, whether that means writing some scrappy code or hopping on a flight to get things done

Bonus Points

- Experience with robotics, autonomous vehicles, embodied AI, or multimodal ML.
- Experience with video, sensor, trajectory, or teleoperation datasets.
- Familiarity with SQL, Python, or direct dataset analysis.
- Experience designing annotation ontologies or evaluation datasets.
- Experience coordinating external data vendors or collection partners.

## 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
- [Robotics Firmware Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-firmware-engineer-ultra-brooklyn-vsb5dh914ger) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Supply Chain and Procurement Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/supply-chain-and-procurement-lead-ultra-brooklyn-p1brfk2ye8wc) — Brooklyn, NY