Director, Software Engineering – Research & Advanced Development

About the Job

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. You will manage a small team of advanced robotics software engineers focused on evaluating, developing, adapting, and integrating emerging AI-enabled robotics capabilities into real-world robotic systems.

This role combines people management, technical leadership, and hands-on architectural direction. You will define the team’s software priorities, assign and guide technical work, establish evaluation methods, and help the team move quickly from promising ideas to working robotic demonstrations and robust production software capabilities.

You will work closely with cross-functional engineering leaders to ensure advanced robotics work is technically sound, measurable, and aligned with Berkshire Grey’s long-term automation roadmap. This is an ideal role for a software leader who is excited by fast-moving robotics technology, comfortable operating in ambiguous problem spaces, and motivated by building practical robotic systems that work in the real world.

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.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 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.
• Master’s degree in Robotics, Computer Science or a closely related field.

6110-2605KM