As the first Forward Deployed Engineer at Paddington Robotics Limited, you will bridge the gap between lab-based R&D and real-world supermarket deployments. You will lead the installation, troubleshooting, and maintenance of robotics on customer sites while collaborating with hardware and software teams to iterate on designs based on field data.
Forward Deployed Engineer at Paddington Robotics Limited
Paddington Robotics Limited is hiring its first Forward Deployed Engineer to take cutting-edge AI robots out of the lab and into the real-world chaos of UK supermarkets. Led by a Magic Pony co-founder and a team from Amazon and InstaDeep, this seed-stage startup is reimagining manual labour. If you're a mechatronics or robotics expert who thrives on solving messy hardware-software challenges on-site and wants to shape a brand-new deployment function, this is your chance to make a massive impact. Based in West London with UK-wide travel, you'll be the face of the company while building the future of applied robotics.
About this role
Role overview
About the company
Paddington Robotics Limited is an applied research company focused on solving real-world data challenges for embodied AI operating in human spaces, with an initial emphasis on applications in supermarkets. The company is systematically tackling the hard problems for real-world robotics whilst developing advanced AI to understand our physical world.
Backed by 7percent Ventures, Octopus Ventures.
What you'll do
What you will do
- Lead the end-to-end commissioning, installation, and site-specific setup of robots at customer locations across the UK, ensuring seamless integration into daily operations.
- Act as the primary on-site troubleshooter, diagnosing and resolving complex issues across software, hardware, networking, and electrical systems under operational pressure.
- Collaborate closely with the engineering HQ to replicate field failures, identify patterns of improvement, and drive the iterative development of more robust robotics hardware and AI models.
Who you are
Who this is a fit for
- Possesses a multidisciplinary technical background in Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, or Robotics with significant hands-on experience debugging both hardware and software systems.
- Demonstrates a practical, "whatever it takes" mindset, willing to travel UK-wide 3-4 days a week and support early 4am operational shifts to ensure customer success.
- Thrives in a dynamic startup environment, combining strong communication skills for customer training with the analytical ability to feed technical insights back to a high-performing engineering team.
Why this role
Why this role is remarkable
- Join as the first hire in a critical new deployment team, directly shaping how the company scales its technology from the lab to national retail environments.
- Work under the leadership of a Magic Pony co-founder and a high-pedigree technical team from Amazon, InstaDeep, and top-tier universities like Cambridge and UCL.
- Experience immediate real-world impact by deploying cutting-edge AI robotics into live supermarket settings, solving unique edge cases that simulation and research simply cannot replicate.
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