San Francisco, United States
Production Test Engineer
Physical Intelligence · San Francisco · United States
Posted: 8/3/2026 · Last checked: 10/17/2026
Job description
Quoted in full from Physical Intelligence's job posting. Gavroche does not edit it.
Physical Intelligence is bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world. We are a team of engineers, scientists, roboticists, and company builders developing foundation models and learning algorithms to power the robots of today and the physically actuated devices of the future.
We’re looking for a Production Test Lead to build the software foundation for manufacturing Physical Intelligence’s robotic systems at increasing volume.
You’ll own the systems that technicians use to flash firmware, provision devices, configure hardware, execute calibration and test procedures, and record manufacturing results. You’ll translate evolving engineering processes into safe, guided workflows that can be executed consistently without requiring technicians to use a command line or understand the underlying implementation.
This role sits at the intersection of runtime software, hardware engineering, manufacturing, test, infrastructure, and inventory systems. You will work closely with those teams to turn prototype scripts and manual procedures into secure, observable, versioned production tooling.
In this role you will
Own the architecture and development of PI’s manufacturing software platform.
Build technician-friendly, step-by-step workflows for assembly, flashing, provisioning, calibration, and final test.
Convert engineering scripts and manual procedures into versioned, repeatable manufacturing operations.
Develop local station software that securely exposes allowlisted hardware capabilities to hosted manufacturing workflows.
Design workflow primitives for automated steps, operator instructions, retries, timeouts, cancellation, resumability, and acceptance criteria.
Build reliable mechanisms for downloading, caching, verifying, and updating firmware and manufacturing binaries.
Integrate manufacturing workflows with inventory systems to register hardware, assign identities, and record required metadata.
Establish traceability for operators, stations, devices, software versions, step results, durations, and captured test artifacts.
Debug problems across cloud services, local Linux stations, networks, embedded devices, and test equipment.
Partner with manufacturing and hardware engineers to define acceptance criteria and automate quality checks.
What we hope you'll bring
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
5+ years of software engineering experience, preferably involving manufacturing, robotics, hardware test, embedded systems, or fleet operations.
Strong Python experience and familiarity with Linux systems, services, permissions, packaging, and process management.
Experience building reliable web applications and APIs used to orchestrate local or remote hardware.
Experience designing stateful workflows with retries, timeouts, resumability, cancellation, and failure recovery.
Familiarity with device provisioning, firmware flashing, OTA updates, calibration, or automated hardware testing.
Experience integrating with inventory, traceability, MES, ERP, or similar production systems.
Strong understanding of asynchronous jobs, idempotency, durable state, and distributed-system failure modes.
Experience with secure artifact distribution, authentication, authorization, and least-privilege hardware access.
Ability to diagnose issues across browsers, networks, operating systems, backend services, and physical devices.
Strong product judgment for technician-facing workflows and operational tooling.
Excellent cross-functional communication and project-management skills.
Bonus points if you have
Experience with robotics, computer vision, camera calibration, networking hardware, Raspberry Pi-class devices, Bazel, Kubernetes, or cloud infrastructure.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Similar roles in San Francisco
- Firmware Test Engineer · Echo Neurotechnologies, San Francisco
- Field Test Engineer · ATOMS Careers page, San Francisco
- Senior Hardware Reliability & Test Engineer · ATOMS Careers page, San Francisco
- Hardware Signal Quality Test Engineer · Ōura, San Francisco
- Senior Assembly - Integration and Test Engineer · Samara Aerospace, San Francisco
- Senior Robotics Test Engineer · ATOMS Careers page, San Francisco
200 open roles like this one; at most three per employer shown.
What qa / test engineer adverts in the United States state
Middle half: 120,000 – 170,000 USD a year; median 141,663 USD.
From 340 adverts by 95 employers that state a salary, annualised.
How qa / test engineer roles in the United States are worked
1% fully remote · 10% hybrid · 89% do not say
Of 68 adverts. An advert that does not state a work mode is counted as not saying, not as on-site.
New openings in San Francisco, by week
- 7/20/2026 110
- 7/27/2026 129
- 8/3/2026 140
- 8/10/2026 188
- 8/17/2026 185
- 8/24/2026 197
- 8/31/2026 285
- 9/7/2026 266
- 9/14/2026 313
- 9/21/2026 383
- 9/28/2026 370
- 10/5/2026 398
- 10/12/2026 354
3,318 openings over 12 weeks, by the week they were published.
Other roles at Physical Intelligence
- Robotics Software Engineer · San Francisco
- Software Engineer - AI Productivity · San Francisco
- Software Engineer - Data Quality · San Francisco
- Software Engineer - Robot Interfaces · San Francisco
- Deployments Software Engineer · San Francisco
- ML Engineer - API Platform · San Francisco
39 open.