Software Engineer, Covariant
Emeryville, CA
AI Robotics company
Open for applications
AI Robotics company
101-200 employees
Open for applications
Emeryville, CA
101-200 employees
Company mission
To build the Covariant Brain, a universal AI to give robots the ability to see, reason and act on the world around them.
Role
Who you are
- An impact-driven mindset - willingness to work in a variety of technical areas as needed, to solve real problems, and deliver business impact
- A solid foundation in Software Engineering. Experience with at least one programming language, e.g. Python or C/C++, and willingness to pick up new languages or technologies as needed
- A broad range of knowledge base and interests ranging from SWE / AI to HW
Desirable
- Have a desire to work with a small collaborative team, with a high degree of autonomy and responsibility
- Are motivated to work on challenging real-world engineering problems
- Enjoy autonomy in figuring out what is the most important problem to work on
- Are committed to continuous learning
What the job involves
- Iterate quickly on the end-to-end performance of our main robotics applications leveraging a wide variety of skill sets (AI, SW, and HW)
- Build mission-critical software, from robotic systems to cloud infrastructure, with attention to performance, reliability, security, and code quality
- Deliver previously-impossible robotics capabilities that solve real needs for our partners and customers
- Collaborate with, learn from, and support a diverse and cross-functional team, including mechanical, electrical, software engineers, AI/ML researchers, and business development
- Assist Solutions, Business, Sales, and Product in deployment ramp-up and demos
- Sample week in the life:
- Monday - Add a new runtime capability to our core message-passing infrastructure. Give a technical deep-dive talk to the company about our robotics application framework
- Tuesday - As the software lead of one of our products, meet with leadership to discuss strategy and execution. Develop a product-independent pick-and-place module, and migrate existing application code to use it
- Wednesday - Mentor a software engineer on how to use our APIs to write a reusable component
- Thursday - Work with the Hardware team to design a microcontroller solution for a mechatronics component. Collaborate with Research to implement a generalized performance improvement across applications
- Friday - Partner with Sales and Solutions to prepare a product demo for a potential customer
Otta's take
Theo Margolius
COO of Otta
Covariant's investors have solid backgrounds in AI research and academia and have a clear vision of how they want to impact the robotics industry. They have successfully deployed of the Covariant Brain in different sectors, including fashion, health, logistics, and pharmaceuticals.
Robotic AI has made huge leaps in recent years, but a global labour crunch means that supply chain and manufacturing firms are demanding more from their robotic workforces, requiring a precision and dexterity not yet reached without human assistance. Covariant exists to provide just this, outfitting robots with a universal AI for robotic manipulation.
With the global robotics industry expected to balloon to $86 billion by 2027, there is no shortage of firms working in this field. Competitors include Kindred and RightHand Robotics. However, Covariant is unique in its focus on autonomous robotics and in the range of its applications, which can be used in formerly difficult areas such as order picking regardless of the type of objects that need to be manipulated. It also has an edge in that its solution can be deployed to existing robots without new hardware or extensive reprogramming, significantly reducing onboarding costs.
Covariant has received significant funding for its product and is expanding internationally and into new verticals. It is looking to further develop the Covariant Brain and to maintain its market lead as companies continue to double down on investments in automation.
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Apr 2023
$75m
SERIES C
Jul 2021
$80m
SERIES C
Total funding: $222m
Company benefits
- Vision and dental insurance
- Flexible working hours
- Equal opportunity employer
- Work from home opportunities
- Health insurance
- Unlimited PTO
- Lunch and dinner each day (for on-site employees)
- Monthly health & wellness budget
- Quarterly learning budget
- 401k plan and match
Company values
- Breaking new ground, together
- Learning constantly
- Striving for empathy
Company HQ
Southwest Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Founders
Tianhao Zhang
(Co-founder)Tianhao worked as a Grad Researcher during their UCB PhD, before co-founding Covariant in September 2017.
Pieter Abbeel
(President & Chief Scientist)Having taken a PhD at Stanford, Pieter started working as a Professor at UCB in 2008, before co-founding Gradescope and working as an OpenAI Research Scientist. They co-founded Covariant in 2017, where they have worked since.
Peter Xi Chen
(CEO)PhD in Philosophy and a BA in Computer Science from Stanford. Started his career as a Research Scientist at Open AI before co-founding Covariant.
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