Founding Robotics Engineer

Founding Robotics EngineerLocation: Toronto, ON (Hybrid / On-site) Company: Zleni Robotics Stage: Pre-seed | Pilot deployments in development About Zleni Zleni is building autonomous robotics for senior living. Our mission is to address chronic staffing shortages by developing AI-powered robots that automate repetitive physical tasks, allowing caregivers to spend more time providing direct resident care. We're beginning with high-frequency operational workflows in retirement communities before expanding into broader care applications. Our long-term vision is to develop intelligent care robots capable of assisting across senior living environments. We're assembling our founding engineering team and are looking for an exceptional robotics engineer to help build and deploy our first autonomous robotic systems. The Role As Zleni's Founding Robotics Engineer, you'll work directly with the founder to build the company's first robotic platform. You'll play a key role in shaping our technical architecture, hardware selection, software stack, and product roadmap. This is a highly hands-on engineering role spanning robotics software, AI, perception, manipulation, and real-world system integration. You'll help take robots from simulation to deployment in senior living environments. What You'll Do Develop the software stack powering autonomous mobile manipulation.Build perception, planning, navigation, and manipulation capabilities.Integrate sensors, cameras, robotic arms, and mobile bases.Develop computer vision and AI systems using modern robotics frameworks.Work with simulation environments including NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, and ROS 2.Design and execute testing in both simulated and real-world environments.Deploy robotic systems into pilot retirement communities and iterate based on customer feedback.Help establish engineering processes, tooling, and technical standards as the team grows.Contribute to hiring and mentoring future robotics engineers. Preferred Experience We're less concerned about years of experience than your ability to build. Experience with several of the following is preferred: ROS 2NVIDIA Isaac Sim / Isaac LabC++PythonComputer VisionDeep LearningRobot ManipulationMotion PlanningSLAMSensor FusionReinforcement LearningVision-Language-Action (VLA) modelsEmbedded SystemsLinux Nice to Have Experience building autonomous robots.Robotics competition experience.Open-source robotics contributions.Background in Robotics, Mechatronics, Computer, Electrical, or Mechanical Engineering.Experience deploying robotic systems outside the lab. Who You Are You enjoy solving difficult engineering problems.You move quickly and are comfortable with ambiguity.You thrive in fast-moving startup environments.You're excited to work directly with customers and iterate rapidly.You want significant ownership over what you build.You're motivated by building technology that meaningfully improves people's lives. Compensation Competitive salary based on experience.Meaningful early employee equity.Opportunity to become one of the first engineering hires and help shape the technical direction of the company.Work alongside the founder in building a category-defining robotics company. Why Join? Robotics is reaching an inflection point. Advances in AI, computer vision, and foundation models are making robots capable of performing increasingly useful work outside factories. Senior living represents one of the largest underserved opportunities for physical AI, with growing labor shortages and increasing demand for automation. By joining Zleni at this stage, you'll have the opportunity to help build foundational technology that can transform how care is delivered while working on some of the hardest and most meaningful problems in robotics. If you're excited about building real robots that solve real-world problems, we'd love to hear from you.