Director, Software Engineering – Research & Advanced Development

About the role

Berkshire Grey is a leader in AI-enabled robotics, providing innovative automation solutions for e-commerce, retail replenishment, package handling, and logistics operations. Our technology automates complex warehouse tasks such as picking, packing, sorting, and trailer unloading. As a Director of Software, you will lead software for Berkshire Grey’s Research and Advanced Development program. This role combines people management, technical leadership, and hands-on architectural direction to evaluate, develop, adapt, and integrate emerging AI-enabled robotics capabilities into real-world robotic systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a team of advanced robotics software engineers, including work planning, priority setting, technical guidance, mentorship, and performance development.
• Define technical priorities, assign work, and drive execution across software architecture, experimentation, evaluation, and integration activities.
• Provide architectural leadership for software systems that evaluate and incorporate emerging AI-enabled robotics capabilities.
• Guide the team in designing rigorous experiments, benchmarks, and evaluation workflows for advanced robotic behaviors.
• Evaluate new robotics technologies, models, tools, and frameworks; assess their practical value, risks, and fit for Berkshire Grey’s robotics applications.
• Drive rapid prototyping and demonstration of new robotic capabilities while maintaining a clear path toward reliable and maintainable software.
• Work closely with hardware, systems, perception, controls, product, and software engineering teams to align advanced development work with broader engineering needs.
• Establish engineering practices that improve team velocity, software quality, experiment repeatability, and technical clarity.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, technical planning, and career development.
• Communicate team plans, progress, risks, and technical tradeoffs to engineering leadership and other stakeholders.
• Stay current with advances in robotics, AI, robot learning, simulation, and manipulation; determine where those advances can create practical value for Berkshire Grey.
• Support the transition of mature advanced-development capabilities into broader engineering use through clear architecture, documentation, testing, and collaboration.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a closely related field.
• 10+ years of professional software development experience, including significant experience with robotics, automation, or complex cyber-physical systems.
• 3+ years of technical leadership or people management experience, including responsibility for planning work, assigning priorities, mentoring engineers, and driving execution through a team.
• Strong software development expertise in Python and/or C++.
• Demonstrated experience leading software architecture and execution for advanced robotic systems.
• Experience evaluating, integrating, or adapting modern AI / ML-based robotics capabilities for real-world robotic applications.
• Experience working with real robotic systems, including debugging, test design, experiment execution, and performance analysis.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team setting and communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a closely related field.
• Experience with robotic manipulation, motion planning, robot learning, perception-driven control, or real-time robotics systems.
• Experience with robotic foundation models, vision-language-action models, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, or other emerging AI approaches for robotics.
• Experience with ROS / ROS2.
• Experience with major ML frameworks such as PyTorch.
• Experience with simulation environments such as Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, or similar tools.
• Experience designing evaluation frameworks, benchmark suites, datasets, and experiment workflows for robotic capabilities.
• Experience with sim-to-real workflows, real and simulated data capture, and hardware-in-the-loop testing.
• Experience with distributed systems, asynchronous/concurrent programming, containerization, and cloud or GPU-based compute workflows.
• Experience managing senior engineers or research-oriented engineering teams.
• Familiarity with material handling, warehouse automation, logistics, e-commerce fulfillment, or industrial robotics.

Job ID: 6110-2605KM