Robotics Software Engineering Manager

Do you want to help build real technology for a meaningful purpose? Do you want to fight to make the world’s fresh produce healthier, tastier, and more sustainable? 

As a Robotics Software Engineering Manager at Tortuga, you’ll be core to the development of our robotic fruit harvesting software and work on significant changes to our code base to improve performance. You’ll be managing a sub-team that develops world-leading, full-fleet autonomous behaviors in some of the most interesting, challenging, and coolest field environments there are (a literal field!). You and your team will focus on improving the reliability, scalability, and maintainability of Tortuga’s software stack. In this role, you will oversee a balance of long-term sustainability projects and short-term improvements to the Field Operations team’s daily experience running our robots at customer sites. You and your team will directly witness the impacts of your work on our robots’ industry-leading performance and capabilities.

As a leader at Tortuga, you’ll be fundamental to our success, growth, and culture. You’ll bring experience and a passion for our mission while also thriving in a fast-paced, flexible, and energized startup environment. You’re excited to grow your role and leadership skills as Tortuga grows. 

What you’ll do

• Oversee a team of 3–6 software engineers in shipping high-quality, maintainable software to customer sites

• Empathetically drive continual improvement of the team’s processes, performance, and impact

• Build relationships with other teams across Tortuga to understand company software needs and coordinate to improve aspects of driving and picking performance

• Exercise strategic judgment by achieving and clearly communicating a balance between long- and short-term interests. When necessary, buffer short term issues (for a time) to make a larger incremental rework possible

• Write and maintain C++, integrating creative solutions to complex problems across perception, navigation, manipulation, or other areas to support robotic harvesting

• Triage, diagnose, and fix bugs across a large codebase

• Build the system that enables hundreds of robots to navigate various farm environments 

• Lead projects and initiatives

• Up to 10% travel, including international travel

What we’re looking for

• Required: experience managing, coaching, and hiring software engineers in a production environment while simultaneously contributing to software development

• Required: 3+ years’ experience in professional, full-stack software development in autonomous navigation, robotics, or relevant fields, with understanding of C++ and ROS

• Required: a demonstrated track record of proactively working with a field operations team to identify, prioritize, and resolve problems at customer sites by driving a software development schedule

• Required: a passion and talent for translating short term issues into an architecture that touches cohesively designed testing and on-robot-glue-software

• Required: experience with supporting a fleet of robots or autonomous vehicles and knowledge of multi-robot algorithms

• Required: Bachelor of Science in Robotics, Engineering, Computer Science, or other related field; Master of Science a plus

• Preferred: Experience with Python, ROS, AWS, Postgres, GitLab, Grafana, and Jira

• Must enjoy a fast-paced environment; startup experience a major plus

• Exceptional problem solving skills, including troubleshooting, data analysis, and timing code execution

• Great communication skills, results-oriented, and able to meet or exceed deadlines

The base salary range below represents the low and high end of our salary range for this position. Actual salaries may vary and may be above or below the range based on various factors including but not limited to experience, education, responsibilities, and regular and/or necessary travel. The range listed is just one component of Tortuga’s total compensation package for employees.

Denver area base salary range: $165,000 - $200,000 per year. Relocation assistance is available for out-of-state candidates.

This position is based in Denver, with the ability to work from home 1-2 days a week, based on business needs (100% remote is not available). 

Please note you must be authorized to work in the United States for this position.

About Tortuga

Tortuga AgTech’s mission is to build a healthier society, and a thriving ecosystem, through smarter farming. We’re pursuing our mission by building robotic harvesting and precision analytics systems for the world’s leading fresh produce growers (delicious things like strawberries, tomatoes, bell peppers, and herbs). We’re building not just because it’s fun, but because we believe thoughtful, well-built advanced technology can help farmers grow healthier, fresher, more environmentally sustainable produce for everyone. We’re backed by some of the most respected early-stage investors in Silicon Valley, as well as ag industry veterans. 

Tortuga means “turtle” in Spanish. Around the world, turtles are symbols of wisdom, patience, and connectedness to the Earth. We’re proud to be based in Denver, CO - a growing and leading robotics hub in North America, and a great place to live! 

Tortuga is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment including the decision to hire, promote, discipline, or discharge, will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical​​​ condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or ​expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.