Chef Robotics is accelerating the deployment of intelligent machines in the physical world, starting with food production—a sector facing the largest labor shortage in the U.S., with 1.14M unfilled jobs today and 3.1M projected by 2030. These roles cannot be offshored, making robotics essential to keeping production onshore and strengthening America’s manufacturing base. Backed by investors like Kleiner Perkins, Construct, Bloomberg Beta, and Promus Ventures, and supported by a world-class team from companies such as Cruise, Zoox, Google, Tesla, and Amazon Robotics, Chef is rapidly scaling with multiple multi-year contracts and a mission to put an intelligent robot in every commercial kitchen.
About the RoleWe are hiring an Applications Engineer to serve as the vital link between our customers and our engineering teams. This role spans the full customer journey, from early technical evaluation through deployment, production ramp-up, and long-term success, driving both customer success and product excellence. If you are excited by a mix of customer engagement, hands-on robotics engineering, and real-world deployment, this position offers a unique opportunity to directly shape how robotics is deployed in large-scale food production environments. You’ll partner with customers to bring robotic systems online, drive continuous improvement, and directly impact Chef’s growth and product roadmap. As a member of our Applications team, you will learn a rare blend of technical, operational, and customer-facing expertise that few roles offer. Success in this position opens the door to your career growth, whether toward technical leadership, product management, field engineering, or customer success sales leadership.
Responsibilities:
- Partner with Sales and Product teams during early customer engagements to assess customer needs, identify opportunities, and evaluate technical feasibility.
- Work directly with customers’ engineering and operations teams to understand their processes, challenges and success metrics.
- Configure, test, and validate Chef’s robotic systems in the lab, working closely with R&D to adapt to each customer’s unique production environment.
- Lead and project manage deployments, coordinating across Chef’s engineering, manufacturing, and customer teams to ensure smooth installations.
- Lead on-site deployments, including installation, qualification testing, and production hardening
- Work hands-on with the systems to test new software, configurations and resolve break fix hardware repairs.
- Provide post-deployment support to ensure customer satisfaction and identify opportunities for product and feature expansion.
- Capture customer feedback and translate it into actionable insights for Chef’s product and engineering teams.
- Serve as the technical face of Chef Robotics representing our engineering rigor, problem-solving mindset and commitment to customer success.
Qualifications:
- You are energized by seeing technology make a tangible impact in the real world and enjoy the challenge of bringing complex systems to life in customer environments.
- You thrive in dynamic, fast-paced settings and can manage multiple deployments, customers and competing priorities with professionalism and clarity.
- You’re an excellent communicator who can translate between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- You’re self-driven and resourceful, with a bias for action and the ability to work autonomously in the field.
Requirements:
- BS or MS in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or a related field
- 2+ years of experience in applications engineering, deployment, solutions engineering, field robotics or a similar customer-facing technical role
- Prior experience in at least one of the following: robotics, motion planning, perception, controls or automation systems.
- Willingness to travel up to 75% across North America to support customer deployments and on-site work
- Familiarity with Linux/Unix, Robot Operating System (ROS), and scripting in Python.
- Strong organizational and interpersonal skills - comfortable collaborating across technical and operations teams both internally and with customers
- Able to work independently and with minimal supervision
- Must be available to work a flexible schedule to support customers, including some weekend, nights and on-call hours
Why You’ll Love Working Here
- Be part of a mission-driven team transforming one of the world’s largest industries.
- Work hands-on with cutting edge robotic systems solving real world problems.
- Collaborate with a world class, cross functional team of roboticists, engineers and operators.
- Build rare, multidisciplinary expertise at the intersection of robotics, operations and customer success.
- Benefit from professional growth with exposure to both leadership and technical career paths.
