Senior Application Engineer - Customer Experience

JOB SUMMARY

Apptronik's most important audiences — the executives, customers, investors, and partners who will define how the world sees Apollo — encounter our technology through live demonstrations. This role is responsible for making those moments exceptional.

As Senior Application Engineer, Customer Experience, you will own the full lifecycle of Apollo demonstrations at our California office and at events worldwide. You will design, build, and operate the robot behaviors and workcell environments that bring Apollo to life for VIP visitors — applying the same engineering discipline, rigor, and process we use for every customer field deployment. 

Operating as the senior technical presence at our California satellite office, you will work with significant autonomy, represent Apptronik's engineering capability to our most critical audiences, and serve as a direct feedback channel between what customers experience and what our product teams build. This is a high-visibility, high-impact engineering role at the intersection of robotics, customer engagement, and product storytelling.

This role is part of the Applications Engineering team and operates under the same processes, standards, and expectations as every other Application Engineer. The California office is a flagship environment where Apptronik's capabilities are on display to the world's most important audiences, and this engineer plays a central role in shaping those experiences.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES or KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:

Requirements & Strategy

• Stakeholder alignment — Partner with Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success leadership to define objectives, success criteria, and technical scope for each high-priority visit; capture the agreed storyline and constraints in a concise brief that aligns all internal stakeholders before execution begins.
• Technical scoping authority — Serve as the definitive technical voice on Apollo's demonstrable capabilities — providing honest, confident assessments of what can be shown credibly and reliably to any given audience, and shaping stakeholder expectations accordingly.
• Audience-driven design — Translate visit objectives into scenario designs that reflect real customer problems and workflows, ensuring every demonstration is grounded in the customer's world, not just the robot's capabilities.

Design & Architecture

• Solution architecture — Design demonstration scenarios with the same structured approach used in customer field deployments: clear requirements, defined success criteria, risk assessment, and a documented architecture that can be handed off and reproduced.
• Fallback and risk design — Define comprehensive fallback architectures and failure-mode mitigation strategies that protect demonstration integrity under live conditions — anticipating failure paths before they occur and building recovery into the run-of-show by design.
• Simulation-driven development — Build and maintain demonstration-specific simulation environments using tools such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Gazebo, or MuJoCo to validate and optimize robot behaviors before live deployment, reducing integration risk and rehearsal time.

Build & Integration

• Application development — Develop, configure, and tune the demo applications and robot behaviors required for each scenario, reusing production-grade software where possible and building purpose-built variants where needed — maintaining code quality and documentation standards throughout.
• Workcell ownership — Build and own the Apollo demonstration environment at the California office — including hardware configuration and staging — ensuring the environment meets both technical requirements and the experiential standards expected by VIP visitors.
• Hardening and readiness — Drive demonstration readiness through rigorous rehearsal, systematic testing, and issue tracking; identify hardware and software problems early and maintain accountability for their resolution with the relevant engineering teams.

Execution

• Run-of-show ownership — Own every aspect of live demonstration execution: pre-flight checks, real-time robot operation, presenter support, and calm, decisive triage and recovery when issues arise. Perform consistently under the highest-stakes conditions this company faces.
• Guest engagement — Support presenters and engage directly with visitors as needed during live events — answering technical questions clearly, adapting to audience interest in real time, and ensuring every guest interaction reflects well on Apptronik. Leadership and C-suite will typically lead formal presentations for VIP visits.
• Post-demonstration review — Lead structured post-demonstration reviews to capture outcomes, failures, and follow-up actions; translate findings into concrete feedback for engineering and product teams to inform platform and capability development.
• Event support — Lead or support demonstrations at trade shows, industry events, and customer sites. From time to time, may be asked to lead high-profile demonstrations at Apptronik HQ in Austin. Approximately 20–40% travel is required domestically and internationally.

Program Management & Enablement

• Concurrent program ownership — Manage multiple demonstration requests in parallel — owning scope, timeline, rehearsal planning, and resource coordination across concurrent visits and events with minimal supervision.
• Enablement assets — Build and maintain comprehensive runbooks, SOPs, checklists, and software tools that enable trained colleagues and partners to execute standard demonstrations consistently and independently.
• Product feedback loop — Serve as a direct conduit between live customer experience and internal product development — systematically capturing what resonates, what fails, and what customers ask for, and ensuring that intelligence reaches the teams who can act on it.
  
  

SKILLS AND REQUIREMENTS:

• Demonstrated ability — to turn ambiguous, high-stakes visit objectives into robust, repeatable demonstration architectures with minimal supervision — owning the full lifecycle from scoping through delivery and review.
• Proven track record — delivering live demonstrations to executive and VIP audiences — including keynotes, investor visits, and trade shows — with documented success in risk management, fallback design, and live recovery.
• Demonstrated expertise — solving complex technical and operational problems under time pressure, including leading live triage and recovery during demonstrations where failure is not an option.
• Proven program management capability — across multiple concurrent demonstration requests, including scope definition, timeline management, rehearsal planning, and cross-functional coordination.
• Robotics software — Expertise working with C++, Python, and ROS in a Linux development environment.
• Robotics fundamentals — Strong understanding and practical application of robotic concepts including kinematics, dynamics, motion planning, and control systems.
• Simulation — Extensive experience using robotics simulation tools (NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Gazebo, MuJoCo, or equivalent) to design, validate, and optimize robot behaviors and reduce integration risk prior to live deployment.
• Communication skills — Strong ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly to non-technical audiences, build rapport with visitors, and support presenters effectively during high-priority events. Comfort engaging directly with guests in a supporting role, including handling technical questions with confidence and composure.
• Cross-functional influence — Ability to align Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and CS stakeholders on demonstration scope and objectives, and to communicate technical constraints and tradeoffs clearly to non-technical partners.

EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field required. Master's degree preferred.
• 4+ years of hands-on experience in a customer-facing engineering role, with a proven track record of independently owning high-stakes demonstrations or deployments of mobile robotic systems end-to-end.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS: 

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer
• Must be able to lift 25-45 pounds at times
• Vision to read printed materials and a computer screen
• Hearing and speech to communicate
• International travel likely; passport highly desired
• Travel up to 40% may be required

Compensation: The annual compensation for this position is $165,000 - $190,000 (USD) + 20% bonus target