Senior C++ Software Engineer – Robotics

Source: WhatJobs

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Requirements : Candidates eligible for UK employment

Company Overview

Fieldwork Robotics is a pioneering autonomous robotics company developing modular, multi‑crop, soft and adaptive robots designed to operate in real‑world, non‑controllable environments such as agricultural fields. Our mission is to transform farming through intelligent, scalable robotic systems that improve productivity, sustainability, and efficiency.

We operate a growing R&D headquarters in Cambridge and are establishing a new engineering hub in Lisbon following the incorporation of our Portugal subsidiary. Our teams work collaboratively across hardware, software, and operations to deliver reliable, production‑grade autonomous robots.

Why Join Us

We’re building autonomous robots that operate in one of the most challenging real‑world environments imaginable: soft, irregular plants, dense foliage, moving targets, variable lighting, wind, and real commercial performance constraints.

As a Senior C++ Software Engineer, you’ll be responsible for developing the core robot control software that enables our robots to reliably, efficiently, and profitably pick raspberries in the field. You’ll work at the intersection of robot control, perception, planning, and real‑time systems, turning vision and ML outputs into robust physical actions.

This is a hands‑on role with real machines, real crops, and real commercial targets.

What you’ll be doing

Design, develop, maintain and deploy high‑performance modern C++20 software for production autonomous raspberry‑picking robots
Build robot control systems using ROS2 and ROS2 Control, integrating with hardware drivers, actuators, and sensors
Consume perception outputs from vision and ML systems (fruit detection, tracking, quality estimation) and convert them into actionable robot behaviour
Implement and improve algorithms for
Fruit tracking and state estimation
Object detection integration
Path and trajectory planning
Obstacle avoidance in cluttered, deformable environments
Pick sequencing and optimisation under uncertainty
Develop mathematical and algorithmic solutions to real‑world robotics problems involving noise, latency, dynamics, and partial observability
Control and optimise the full pick cycle
Log performance data from the robot and build diagnostics, metrics, and tooling to analyse failures and improve reliability, speed, and yield
Debug complex system‑level issues spanning software, hardware, perception, and environment
Drive improvements in robot performance against commercial KPIs such as pick success rate, throughput, damage rate, and uptime
Collaborate closely with robotics, vision, ML, mechanical, electronics and embedded systems, and operations teams to ship integrated solutions

What we’re looking for

Strong professional experience writing modern C++ in production systems
Docker/containerised deployment
Solid experience with ROS2 and ROS2 Control in real robotic platforms in distributed robotic architectures
Proven ability to write robust, maintainable, and testable control software
Experience working with perception outputs (vision, ML, sensor fusion) in robotics
Strong foundations in core software engineering principles coupled with a strong ability in mathematics
Experience with motion planning, trajectory generation, or real‑time robot control
Comfortable working in complex, noisy, real‑world environments (not just simulation)
Practical debugging skills — you enjoy finding the root cause of complex, cross‑disciplinary problems
Experience working with production level software
GitLab for version control and code review and CI/CD pipelines
Jira for planning and delivery tracking
Structured release processes and versioning strategies
Emphasis on code quality, documentation, and long‑term maintainability

Nice to have

Experience with embedded/edge compute platforms (e.g. NVIDIA Jetson‑class hardware)
Familiarity with cloud platforms, data systems, and fleet‑level software
Experience with agricultural, mobile, or outdoor robotics
Familiarity with real‑time systems, hardware interfaces, or embedded Linux
Experience tuning systems based on field data and operational feedback
Background in optimisation, estimation, or probabilistic robotics

Why this role matters

Your work directly determines whether the robot:

picks the right fruit
operates fast enough to be commercially viable
survives real farms, real weather, and real seasons
You won’t just be writing software — you’ll be driving the robot to hit its performance and commercial targets.

What We Offer

Competitive salary and benefits package
Profit sharing / share options
Company events & social activities
Career progression in a fast‑scaling robotics company
Opportunity to work on real‑world autonomous robots deployed in production environments