Senior Staff Software Engineer - Deployment & Interaction

Apptronik is a human-centered robotics company developing AI-powered robots to support humanity in every facet of life. Our flagship humanoid robot, Apollo, is built to collaborate thoughtfully with people, starting with critical industries such as manufacturing and logistics, with future applications in healthcare, the home, and beyond. We operate at the cutting edge of embodied AI, applying our expertise across the full robotics stack to solve some of society's most important problems. You will join a team dedicated to bringing Apollo to market at scale, tackling the complex challenges like safety, commercialization, and mass production to change the world for the better. JOB SUMMARY Apptronik is hiring a Senior Staff Software Engineer to define the architecture for how our humanoid robots are deployed, integrated, and interacted with in the real world. This role establishes a new technical pillar focused on the last mile of customer engagement: turning Apollo from a platform capability into a fielded, demonstrable, and intuitively operable system at customer sites. The engineer will set the architectural direction for both deployment infrastructure and human-robot interaction (HRI) — designing the interfaces, tools, and workflows that customers, operators, and field engineers use to bring our robots online and put them to work. Initially reporting to the VP of Software Engineering, this leader will partner closely with Infrastructure Software, Platform Software, Hardware, Autonomy, Commercial and Product to translate platform capability into deployed customer outcomes, and will provide technical leadership to the Application Engineers and Software Support Engineers executing field delivery and customer-facing integration. This is an individual contributor role focused on technical architecture, mentorship, and field engineering judgment; people management of the supporting team will be held by engineering management. ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES or KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES Technical Architecture & Vision: Define the end-to-end architecture for Apptronik's deployment and interaction software stack — the systems, interfaces, and tooling that take Apollo from the lab to a working installation at a customer site. Establish a technical north star that mirrors the rigor of our core platform architecture while serving the distinct needs of field, demo, and customer-facing engineering. Human-Robot Interaction Design: Lead the architectural strategy for how humans interact with our robots — from operator interfaces and supervisory control to natural and intuitive end-user interactions. Drive design choices that make complex robotic capabilities legible, controllable, and trustworthy to non-expert users. Customer Site Integration: Own the technical strategy for last-mile delivery and integration at customer environments — spanning on-site infrastructure (compute, networking, hardware monitoring) and platform integration (Fleet Connect, DMS, MLOps tooling). Define the patterns, tooling, and standards that enable repeatable, reliable deployments across heterogeneous customer infrastructure, processes, and operational constraints. Technical Leadership of Field Engineering: Provide architectural and technical direction for the Application Engineers and Software Support Engineers who execute customer demos and deployments — spanning on-site infrastructure work, ML operation in deployment (model fine-tuning, deployment, and evaluation against customer task requirements), and HRI design. Mentor across these disciplines, set technical standards for deployment work, and partner with engineering management on hiring, prioritization, and team growth without owning people management directly. Demo & Field Engineering Excellence: Establish the engineering practices, tooling, and operational posture — observability, SLOs, incident response, and on-call rituals — required to support live customer demonstrations, pilots, and production installations. Lead from the front technically on the most critical customer engagements and pressure-test the platform's readiness through real-world use. Maintain in-person presence at high-stakes customer sites and demos, with travel expected up to 25%. Cross-Functional Partnership: Own the architecture of customer-specific rollouts and final-mile implementations, ensuring each deployment lands reliably in its target environment. Partner deeply with Infrastructure Software (Core), Autonomy, Hardware, Commercial, and Product to translate platform capabilities into deployable, demonstrable customer-facing solutions, and influence platform requirements and product direction by surfacing field learnings back into the core roadmap. Technical Mentorship & Influence: Operate as an org-wide technical authority on deployment, integration, and HRI. Mentor senior and staff engineers across teams, raise the technical bar through design reviews and architectural guidance, and