Lead Engineer Robotics — Teleoperation & Data Capture Systems

Role and context

Work arrangement

• Full-time, on-site role in Abu Dhabi, with regular on-site presence at the Dubai collection facility.
• The role requires working on the floor in a warehouse in the UAE.

Capture hardware and calibration

• Select, qualify, and integrate cameras, wearable rigs, smart glasses, depth and stereo modules, teleoperation VR headsets, tracking and biosignal sensors, and robot-mounted sensors.
• Evaluate field of view, resolution, frame timing, exposure, ergonomics, and failure modes against acceptance criteria.
• Manage custom capture-device requirements, design reviews, pilot builds, qualification, and scale-up decisions with hardware suppliers and contract manufacturers.
• Own camera intrinsics and extrinsics, multi-camera and hand-eye calibration, IMU alignment, and technician-ready recalibration procedures.

Synchronization and fleet operations

• Ensure temporal alignment across video, biosignals, joint states, head and hand pose, and control commands; define clock discipline, triggering, time base, drift measurement, and verification.
• Diagnose and eliminate sub-frame and tens-of-milliseconds sensor offsets.
• Own fleet uptime, maintenance, spares, wear-part cycles, failure logging, MTBF, and repair turnaround.
• Set and meet monthly delivered-hours targets; diagnose availability, operator, rig, or QA-rework bottlenecks.
• Build operator recruiting, training, shift structure, quality tracking, and feedback processes.

Facility and data handoff

• Bring a new collection site from empty warehouse to steady production, covering layout, capture cells, network, storage, compute, power, safety, access control, robot commissioning, and SOPs.
• Launch the new site without interrupting production at the existing facility.
• Define capture data schemas, topics, naming, metadata, and session structure so data converts cleanly into training formats.
• Co-own quality gates and rejection-reason taxonomy with the MLOps lead; own work upstream of ingestion.
• Convert customer acceptance specifications into capture procedures and defend batches in technical reviews.

Leadership and interfaces

• Lead engineers, technicians, and operators; allocate work, hire, set technical standards, and prioritize delivery.
• Represent collection operations to customers, research partners, and hardware vendors.

Required experience and capabilities

• 7+ years in robotics, hardware systems, or sensor engineering, including at least 2 years on production-scale humanoid, manipulation, or wearable capture systems.
• Hands-on multi-sensor time-synchronization experience and the ability to explain a measured and resolved real-world problem.
• Practical calibration and sensor-integration experience with multi-camera systems, depth sensors, IMUs, hardware triggering, and USB/GMSL/Ethernet capture pipelines.
• Working knowledge of humanoid teleoperation, including VR retargeting, gloves or exoskeletons, and whole-body or upper-body controllers.
• Fluency with ROS 2 and rosbag/MCAP, plus conceptual familiarity with formats such as LeRobot and trainable episode quality.
• Python and C++ skills for writing capture tools, QA scripts, and diagnostics.
• Experience owning operational metrics and leading a technical team or shift operation with delivery accountability.
• Willingness to work on-site on the floor in a UAE warehouse.

Additional advantageous experience

• Direct Unitree-class humanoid or equivalent experience is a strong plus.
• Biosignal acquisition (EMG, eye tracking), VLA or robot foundation-model data, hardware-supplier management across the Gulf and Asia, fixture or enclosure design, CAD, rapid prototyping, and facility launches are strong pluses.