Robotics Software Engineer (Senior) - Rust at mimic · Zurich

mimic is an early-stage deep tech robotics & AI start-up based in Zurich and supported by leading VCs. We give industry workers a helping hand for tedious manual labour tasks and mitigate labour shortages with a versatile automation platform. Our automation solutions, driven by dexterous robotic hands and cutting-edge AI trained on human observations, bring a new level of AI embodiment to the real world.

As a Robotics Software Engineer, you’ll engineer the low-latency, high-throughput systems that host our manipulation models. You’ll make sure our physical AI runs flawlessly in production, optimizing every layer - from networking to camera pipelines. You’ll collaborate closely with researchers, robotics/firmware engineers, and robotics operators to build a custom middleware stack that is second to none.

Responsibilities

• Real-Time Pipelines: Engineer low-latency, high-reliability sensor, actuator, and video streaming pipelines across Linux, drivers, and middleware, ensuring strict frame timing and packet scheduling.
• System Performance: Profile and optimize across compute, I/O, memory, scheduling, networking, and storage to meet real-time constraints and increase overall system throughput.
• Whisper to the Kernel: Extend or modify Linux components, drivers, and scheduling mechanisms to achieve deterministic behavior under heavy system load.
• Develop Reliability & Debugging Tooling: Create advanced tools for profiling, tracing, and debugging complex timing issues across distributed systems and hardware interfaces.
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner with researchers, robotics/hardware/firmware engineers, and robot operator teams to seamlessly integrate optimized production pipelines into workflows.

Requirements

• Strong Proficiency in Rust, Python and/or C++, with 3+ years of real production experience of building real-time systems.
• Linux systems programming experience (kernel parameters, scheduling, memory/IO subsystems, syscalls)
• Systems mindset and ability to optimize the stack end-to-end: a mindset focused on determinism, throughput, scalability and hard real-time correctness.
• Fluent English speaker
• Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering or a related engineering discipline.

Nice to have

• Experience in camera systems (synchronization, codecs, GPU offload)
• Experience in kernel-level engineering
• Experience in hard real-time distributed systems
• Streaming experience (WebRTC / real-time-transport)
• Experience in deploying highly reliable robotic systems in production