Software Engineer – Industrial Robotics Safety Systems

About the role

We are seeking a Software Engineer to join our team developing an advanced safety system for industrial robotics. Our system uses sensors to monitor the area surrounding an industrial robot, detect people in proximity to the robot, and provide safety-related signals that can halt or restrict robot operation when a person enters a defined area. This is a hands-on software engineering position combining software development with regular testing on real robotic hardware. The successful candidate will develop and maintain production-quality software, implement and test new system capabilities, diagnose issues across software and hardware, and participate in experiments and system validation. The software stack is primarily Python, with C and C++ used where performance or lower-level implementation requires it. Development and version control are managed through Git and GitHub. Because this role involves frequent integration and testing with physical robotic systems and sensors, candidates should be comfortable working in a laboratory and industrial robotics environment. This is not a fully remote position. The ideal candidate enjoys building software that interacts with the physical world. They are comfortable moving between writing code at a workstation and testing that code on actual hardware. Because this system is intended to contribute to the safety of people working around industrial robots, we particularly value careful engineering. Candidates should be interested in understanding not only whether software works under normal conditions, but also how it behaves under unusual conditions, hardware failures, timing issues, sensor errors, and other edge cases. This position is well suited to someone who enjoys robotics, challenging technical problems, hands-on experimentation, and seeing software operate on real systems. Work Location The position is based at the University of Cincinnati 1819 Innovation Hub, 2900 Reading Road, Cincinnati, OH 45206. Regular onsite work is required because development includes frequent testing and integration with robotic and sensing hardware. Work from home may be available on designated days when onsite hardware access is not required.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and maintain software for an industrial robotics safety system.
• Develop primarily in Python, with C and C++ used for performance-critical or low-level components as needed.
• Develop algorithms and software for processing data from sensors monitoring people and robotic equipment.
• Integrate software with sensors, computing hardware, robot controllers, and related system components.
• Regularly deploy and test software on physical robotic systems.
• Design and execute tests to evaluate system functionality, reliability, performance, and failure behavior.
• Diagnose and troubleshoot issues spanning software, sensors, networking, computing