Are you a Robot Operating System (ROS) expert who thrives on making robots run more efficiently, reliably and securely? We are seeking a highly skilled ROS Architect to define, configure, and optimize the software backbone of our next-generation Physical AI Brain. In this role, you will move beyond standard implementation to advanced customisation; from tuning system performance, minimizing latency, and ensuring robust and secured DDS (Data Distribution Service) configuration for real-world autonomy. Key Responsibilities: <ul style="margin-top:0.0cm;margin-bottom:9.0pt"> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:'Times New Roman', serif">ROS Architecture Design: Define and implement robust ROS architectures, including workspace structure, package management, and node communication paradigms.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">ROS Configuration and Client Library Modification: Configure ROS QoS policies and security features, runtime management (Executor), and modify/add client libraries.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:'Times New Roman', serif">ROS Launch & Deployment: Develop, maintain, and containerize (Docker) complex launch configurations and parameter management systems.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">ROS Development & Integration: Design, code, test, and debug software nodes, services, and actions in C++ or Python to control Physical AI systems.</li> </ul> <ul style="margin-top:0.0cm;margin-bottom:9.0pt"> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Edge Compute OS Optimization: Customizing Linux kernel performance, scheduling, and resource allocation to ensure low-latency performance for robotics applications and other safety-critical tasks.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">System Diagnostics & Troubleshooting: Identifying and resolving low-level system failures, debugging race conditions, and handling memory management to improve stability.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Middleware Development & Integration: Designing and managing the communication framework (e.g., DDS, MQTT) that allows nodes, sensors, and actuators to exchange data in real-time.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Driver Development: Writing and optimizing device drivers for sensors (Lidar, cameras, IMUs) and actuators (motors, servo controllers) to work with Linux and ROS.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Collaboration and Documentation: Working closely with hardware engineers, application teams, and QA testers, and creating technical documentation for system architecture. </li> </ul> Minimum Requirements: <ul> <li style="line-height:21.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Education: Masters/PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, AI, Robotics, or related field.</li> <li style="line-height:21.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Experience: Masters (10 – 15 years)/ PhD (3-5 years) of experience building robotics/Physical AI systems.</li> <li style="line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Operating Systems Internals: Strong understanding of operating system concepts, including process management, multi-threading, concurrency, memory management (paging/virtual memory), and interrupt handling.</li> <li style="line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Linux Environment: Expert knowledge of Ubuntu Linux, terminal usage, shell scripting (Bash), and networking (TCP/IP).</li> <li style="line-height:107%;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">ROS Expertise: Deep knowledge of ROS1 & ROS 2, especially ROS 2 and its middleware components (DDS, FastDDS/CycloneDDS). </li> <li style="line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Robot Behaviour Orchestration: Experience with Behavior Trees and other robot behavior orchestration frameworks.</li> <li style="line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Programming Languages: Deep proficiency in C and C++ is essential for kernel-level development, with Rust increasingly required for modern systems, and Assembly for debugging and performance tuning.</li> </ul> Good to Have: <ul style="margin-top:0.0cm;margin-bottom:9.0pt"> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">GPU Acceleration: Experience with CUDA programming for GPU acceleration.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Edge AI Deployment: Optimizing models (TensorFlow/PyTorch) to run on low-power OS environments.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Robotics Core Algorithms: Understanding of Kinematics, Dynamics, SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), Kalman Filters, and Path Planning.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">GenAI for Robotics: Experience with implementing LLM based Semantic Reasoning and Task Decomposition for decision making, and/or VLM based Perception/Mapping for world state estimation.</li> </ul> Soft Skills: <ul style="margin-top:0.0cm;margin-bottom:9.0pt"> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Problem-Solving: Methodical approach to diagnosing and resolving complex, low-level issues.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Attention to Detail: Meticulous approach, as small errors in OS code can have significant consequences.</li> <li style="margin:0.0cm 0.0cm 9.0pt 0.0px;line-height:18.0pt;background-color:white;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Aptos, sans-serif">Communication: Ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly to cross-functional teams. </li> </ul> What We Offer: • Opportunity to work on state-of-the-art embodied AI models powering real robots. • Combination of research and deployment — not just writing models, but seeing them act in the physical world. • High-impact work on cutting-edge robotic autonomy and swarm behaviours. • Exposure to both AI and hardware-level execution environments.

Principal Physical AI Engineer (ROS Architect) (ST Engineering Jurong East Bui, SG) @ ST Engineering

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