Job Description:

Robotics Software Engineer – Contract

Location: London – Hybrid / Remote

Duration: 3 months

Rate: Flexible

Sector: Robotics & Automation

Opportunity Overview

An innovative robotics and automation business is looking for a Robotics Software Engineer to join its engineering team on an initial 3-month contract.

You’ll work across a modern ROS 2 Jazzy robotics software stack, developing and deploying software that controls industrial robotic systems used in real-world manufacturing environments.

This is an opportunity for a strong software engineer with practical robotics exposure to work alongside robotics developers, controls engineers and product engineers, with your work being deployed directly onto physical robotic systems.

The ideal candidate will be available immediately and able to hit the ground running within an existing codebase. On-site working in East London is preferred, although hybrid and remote applications will also be considered.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and deliver features across a ROS 2 Jazzy robotics software stack.
• Design modular, testable and well-documented software components.
• Diagnose and resolve complex system issues using field data, simulation and real hardware testing.
• Reproduce bugs and validate features directly on physical robotic systems.
• Develop robust solutions to real-world edge cases and integration challenges.
• Participate in code and design reviews to maintain high engineering standards.
• Contribute to developer tooling, engineering processes and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate closely with software, robotics, controls and product engineering teams.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Proven experience developing and maintaining production software, including testing, CI/CD and debugging existing code.
• Strong Python software engineering skills applied to robotics or other complex software systems.
• Practical experience with ROS 2, including nodes, topics, services, actions, parameters, launch and composition.
• Strong Linux skills, including shell, systemd, networking and containers.
• Ability to work effectively within a distributed engineering team and quickly become productive within an existing codebase.
• Experience working with physical hardware, robotics or automation environments is highly desirable.

C++ experience is advantageous but not essential.

Desirable Experience

• Working within a large or established software codebase.
• Docker-based development and deployment.
• Behaviour trees or similar approaches for orchestrating long-running robotic tasks.
• Software integration with physical hardware such as controllers, sensors or industrial equipment.
• Simulation environments such as Isaac Sim, Gazebo or similar.
• Industrial robotic arms, motion planning or manufacturing automation.
• DDS configuration and multi-machine ROS 2 networking.
• Structured logging, metrics and record/replay tooling.
• Embedded Linux and edge-computing platforms such as NVIDIA Jetson.

What’s on Offer

• Initial 3-month contract with immediate impact.
• Opportunity to work on real-world robotics and automation technology.
• Exposure to a modern robotics stack incorporating ROS 2, industrial robots, edge compute and physical AI.
• Collaborative environment working alongside experienced robotics, software and controls engineers.
• Hybrid/remote flexibility, with on-site working in East London preferred.
• The opportunity to see your software deployed directly onto physical robotic systems.

Application Process

If you’re a software engineer with strong Python and ROS 2 experience and are available to start a new contract quickly, we’d be interested in hearing from you.