Role
Principal Software Engineer – Platform Owner (Hands-on)
Context:
At Furhat Robotics we build social humanoid robots that talk, listen, and interact with people in the real world.
Our robots are already used by universities, research labs, hospitals, and innovation teams around the world to study and deploy human–AI interaction.
This isn’t a prototype or a pitch deck.
It’s a real, shipped product running globally.
Technically, it’s a rare mix of:
We’re profitable and small (~20 people).
We’re not trying to build a big engineering organization.
We want one very strong engineer who can own the whole platform
The role (plainly):
You will take full ownership of engineering.
Not manage it.
Not coordinate it.
Own it.
If something breaks, ships late, or feels messy — it’s yours to fix.
If things run smoothly — you did your job.
You’ll work directly with the CEO, our CSO (research), and our product manager.
We have two junior consultants today. You’ll lead them and decide how we build going forward.
What you’ll actually do:
Expect 80–90% hands-on coding/building/fixing
This is not a management role.
You will:
When engineering is slow or fragile, you fix the system — not add headcount.
What success looks like:
After 6–12 months:
Who this is for:
You probably:
You don’t need robotics experience.
Strong backend/platform experience is more important.
Who this is NOT for:
This will not be a good fit if you:
We intentionally keep the team small and senior.
Tech stack:
Practical details:
This role is closer to being a technical co-founder than a typical employee.
If this sounds exciting rather than scary, we should talk.
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About us:
Furhat Robotics builds social humanoid robots that interact with people face-to-face.
Our robots are already deployed in universities, research labs, hospitals, and innovation teams across Europe, the US, and Asia.
They’re used to:
This isn’t research code or a demo.
It’s a real hardware + software platform with paying customers, used daily around the world.
We’re a small (~20 people), profitable company focused on building a solid product, not chasing hypergrowth or headcount.
If you like working on something tangible and technically deep, robotics, realtime systems, SDKs, cloud, AI, this is that rare mix.
Furhat Robotics is robotics startup building social humanoid robots for research and innovation. Grounded in years of research in human-robot interaction, human communication and speech technology, our flagship Furhat Robot provides a customizable platform integrated with the latest face animation, speech and vision models that allow it to carry complex social interactions with people in the real world.
Furhat's core mission is to enable people to easily build real-world use cases and give robots all the essential social and conversational skills needed to interact with humans just as we interact with each other.
