Engineering Manager

Rapyuta Robotics, an ETH Zurich spin-off, operates with the goal of making robots more accessible to anyone in the logistics industry. Rapyuta Robotics seeks individuals who believe that collaborative work leads to more effective and sustainable outcomes and are fearless in challenging limits—whether within themselves or in their surroundings—to make a dent in the universe.  

As an Engineering Manager, you will lead a cross-functional squad delivering real-world robotic and software systems that operate reliably in production. You own team health, performance, and outcomes, work across mechatronics, robotic systems, and application software boundaries to turn strategy into execution, and build a culture aligned with our core values while maintaining high engineering standards. 

Responsibilities 

• People & Team Leadership - Build and lead a high-performing squad by hiring and onboarding the right talent, running effective 1:1s, giving timely feedback, and addressing underperformance; foster a culture of fearlessness, ownership, and constructive disagreement. 

• Delivery & Execution - Own squad delivery end-to-end by translating strategy into clear goals and plans, ensuring reliable execution with clear quality bars, continuously improving ways of working, and communicating progress, risks, and trade-offs to stakeholders. 

• Technical Stewardship - Provide or coordinate technical direction, ensure architectural decisions are understood and implemented, and sponsor engineering excellence in design, testing, observability, incident response, and continuous reduction of technical debt. 

1. Track record of owning delivery of complex systems with high engineering quality and long-term maintainability. 
2. Demonstrated leadership and potential to grow further, grounded in fit with our core values and technical credibility, with a willingness to coach, give feedback, and build healthy teams. 
3. Specialization in one of the following domains 

• Mechatronics: Shipped physical robotic or industrial systems; strong in mechanical–electrical integration, manufacturing constraints, and field reliability. 
• Robotic Systems: Delivered production-grade robotics software (e.g., motion planning, multi-robot systems) beyond lab or simulation environments. 
• Application Software: Led teams building user-facing applications and workflows supported by reliable, scalable backend systems, with strong emphasis on operability and user-centered design. 

More Details  

• Engineering Managers with a Mechatronics Specialization lead one of the company’s mechatronics squads. A squad is a cross-functional team of engineers (typically fewer than 10 people) responsible for one or a small number of physical robotic product subsystems such as AMRs, elevators, battery exchange stations, or ASRS robots. The team typically includes mechanical and electrical engineers and may work closely with a production program manager during manufacturing preparation. The squad owns one or more subsystems end-to-end—from concept development and feature upgrades to validation, and production readiness. The Engineering Manager provides technical direction and delivery of ownership while ensuring the subsystem can be reliably manufactured and deployed through close collaboration with supply chain and manufacturing partners. 

• Engineering Managers with Robotics Systems Specialization have two leadership paths. First, they may lead the Systems Squad, which exists for each product and is responsible for enabling reliable end-to-end system integration and delivery across multiple development squads. This team maintains development and testing infrastructure, supports solution integration, enables end-to-end testing, and facilitates system releases to ensure the overall robotic system operates reliably as a complete solution. Second, they may lead a dedicated robotics software squad focused on core robotics capabilities such as distributed multi-robot systems or motion planning, developing the algorithms and software infrastructure that coordinate robot fleets and enable efficient real-world operation. 

• Engineering Managers with an Application Software Specialization lead squads building the next generation of the logistics software stack that powers robotic warehouse operations. These teams primarily develop systems such as Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) and Warehouse Execution Systems (WES) that orchestrate warehouse workflows and integrate closely with robotic systems. Because warehouse operators and supervisors are primary users, the teams emphasize usability, reliability, and operational visibility. They build scalable backend services and AI-enabled capabilities that manage warehouse operations, orchestrate robot workflows, and support data-driven decision-making. The long-term goal is to build a robotics-powered logistics operating platform that allows warehouses to run efficiently with large robot fleets while providing intuitive tools for human operators.