Job Details

Budbreak Innovations builds autonomous ground robots for commercial vineyards, berry farms, and orchards. Our platform captures high-resolution imagery, GNSS tracks, and LiDAR data across thousands of acres per season, powering crop scouting today and full field automation tomorrow. We are a Cornell spinout with active deployments across California and New York, and we are growing fast.

As a one of the first engineers in the team, you will have a seat at the table on architecture decisions, technology selection, and how we scale our robotics platform from a single robot to a commercial fleet. This is not a feature-execution role. We are looking for someone who wants to own systems end to end, push back when the design is wrong, and carry work from prototype to production in the field. What you build will ship to real farms, affect real growers, and define the technical foundation of the company.

*What you will work on*

* Developing and maintaining software for GNSS, camera, IMU, and LiDAR sensor integration on our edge computing platform
* Improving robot autonomy for vineyard row navigation including localization, row-end detection, and obstacle response
* Developing on-edge data processing algorithms for real-time perception and field intelligence
* Diagnosing and resolving system-level issues including USB reliability, driver stability, and hardware trigger timing in vibration environments
* Supporting field deployment and contributing to documentation that the operations team depends on

*What we are looking for*

* Strong Python and C++ skills in a Linux environment
* Strong mathematical foundation in relevant areas such as linear algebra, probability, optimization, or differential equations
* Familiarity with microcontrollers and embedded Linux platforms
* Familiarity with robotic perception and control algorithms and tools such as state estimation, localization, navigation, or motion control
* Comfort debugging at the hardware-software boundary (GPIO, serial, USB, timing)

*Compensation*

* Founding member equity
* Health insurance
* Relocation assistance if available
* Potential visa sponsorship

Pay: $120,000.00 - $200,000.00 per year

Benefits:
* Health insurance
* Relocation assistance
* Stock options

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Napa, CA 94559