Contract Engineer, ROS
You'll build the robotics substrate adapter alongside a lighthouse ROS team. This is the test of whether the core generalizes to a substrate outside our existing expertise, so scope is tight and outcome-driven.
This is a scoped, deliverable-based contract with a path to a full-time role.
logcat.ai is the AI engineering layer for the operating-system stack. We build agentic systems for Linux and Android devices: we ingest the diagnostic artifacts a device emits (bugreports, logcat, dmesg, modem traces, ramdumps, perfetto, pcap, CAN) and help device makers diagnose, remediate, test, and author features across their OS stack, grounded in their own BSP. Think Datadog and Cursor combined for the OS layer. A VC-backed startup with a small, senior team. You work directly with the founders.
We recently raised a $2.55M pre-seed. The product is scaling and the customer list is growing. The team is still small, so you'll own what you build.
Remote, with at least four hours of overlap with Pacific or IST. We don't track hours. We ask for the overlap because a lot of this work is debugging together in real time, and that doesn't work across a twelve-hour gap. If you're in Seattle or Bengaluru, we'd like to meet in person now and then. It isn't a requirement.
The bar
A quick, honest gut-check before you spend time on an application. If most of this sounds like you, we'd genuinely love to talk. If it's not you yet, no hard feelings, and please keep an eye on our other roles as they open.
- 0110+ years of relevant engineering experience.
- 02ROS 2 in production, including DDS internals (Fast DDS / Cyclone DDS), discovery, and QoS behavior.
- 03ros2_control, Nav2, or MoveIt.
- 04Robotics bringup on Jetson / L4T.
- 05TF2 and multi-sensor time-sync / calibration.
- 06Proficient in day-to-day work with CLI-based AI coding tools like Claude Code (or an equivalent). It's how the team operates, not a nice-to-have.
- Ingest and reason over robotics artifacts: rosbags (including MCAP), DDS discovery and QoS logs, ros2_control / Nav2 / MoveIt failures.
- Diagnose Jetson / L4T boot and platform issues.
- Handle the spatial and timing layer: TF2, sensor calibration, time synchronization.
- Real-time Linux (PREEMPT_RT).
- ros2_tracing / LTTng.
- End-to-end robot bringup done solo.
- Multi-sensor platform integration.
- A front seat as we scale. Customer calls, the roadmap, the pipeline, how the company is actually doing. What you build carries your name on it, and the scope grows faster than the org chart does.
- Top-of-market salary. You're early enough that the ownership is real, not decorative. We'll walk through the full picture on the first call, and this shouldn't be a guessing game.
- AI, all the way down. We use it for everything: writing code, reviewing it, research, ops, internal tooling. Any tool that unblocks you, we buy. If you already work this way, you'll feel at home in a day.
- Your calls to make, from week one. Architecture, tooling, how the work gets done. These aren't consultations here.
- Support while you make them. The founders are hands-on. You own the decision but you don't make it alone.
- A lean team, senior, and kind in a way that's rare at this pace. People share what they know and help before they're asked. It's the part of this job we're proudest of.
- Screening call with our Head of People & Business Operations.
- Technical conversation with our Co-founder and Head of Engineering.
- Technical exercise with our Co-founder and Head of Engineering.
- Final conversation with our Co-founder and CEO.
- References, then offer.
Ready to apply?
Applications go to our hiring pipeline. Tell us what you'd own here, and the hardest thing you've shipped in this domain.
Apply for this role