As the founding robotics hire reporting to the CTO, you will own the entire technical space between intent and motion. You will design learned manipulation policies, develop real-time execution layers, and manage safety interfaces for robots processing 1,000 meals per hour. This is a critical role defining the core architecture for industrial-scale food automation.
Founding Robotics Engineer at Merista
Join the founding team at Merista in Barcelona to build the future of food factory automation. Led by the core team of REMY Robotics (acquired 2025), Merista is deploying autonomous robots that handle 1,000 tasks per hour. As the first robotics hire, you'll own everything from learned manipulation policies to real-time execution layers on local GPU compute. If you're a robotics expert who wants to move beyond research and deploy high-performance systems in fenceless, collaborative environments, this founding role offers unparalleled technical ownership and impact.
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Location
Barcelona, Spain
Compensation
Not Disclosed
Company
Merista
Role overview
Merista is a physical AI company building operated robotic portioning cells for chilled prepared-meal production lines in medium to large food factories.[1][3] Its system is designed as a portioning robot that fits into the footprint of a single worker station on existing lines, where the robot picks up ingredients, deposits them toward a target weight, and places them onto trays or bowls moving through the process.[1] The solution integrates perception and weight sensing for each portion, uses a food-safe robotic arm for ingredient manipulation, performs inline quality assurance checks before trays move to the next station, and logs every portion and check for traceability and analytics.[1] Merista targets cycle times under six seconds per task (subject to ingredient and line validation), aims for around 97% useful uptime after deployment maturity with defined exclusions, and is designed to beat manual baselines in portion accuracy to improve consistency and yield.[1] Its intended commercial model is a flat per-robot monthly subscription that bundles hardware, software, monitoring, and support, positioning the company as an ongoing automation service provider rather than a pure equipment seller.[1] Overall, Merista focuses on automating hard‑to‑fill, repetitive stations in food factories, refining its product while expanding into new markets.[3]
What you will do
- Develop and evaluate learned manipulation policies, determining the optimal balance between imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and simulation for the fleet.
- Architect the execution layer, including trajectory generation, force-domain control, and the real-time loops required for 6-second cycle times on local GPU compute.
- Design robust multi-robot coordination systems and remote-operation recovery paths that ensure 99.9% completion rates in demanding factory environments.
Who this is a fit for
- Several years of experience in real-time robot control and manipulators, specifically with contact-rich tasks using impedance control and force/torque sensing.
- Deep working knowledge of imitation learning, behavior cloning, and VLAs, with the ability to defend policy outputs against strict certification and takt clocks.
- Strong systems judgment regarding state machines and fault handling, with preferred experience in ROS 2, real-time Linux, and European machinery safety regulations.
Why this role is remarkable
- Join a proven founding team that spent seven years scaling REMY Robotics to 15,000 operating hours across five cities prior to its successful 2025 acquisition.
- Solve complex, contact-rich manipulation challenges involving deformable objects and dynamic conveyor tracking in a high-speed, fenceless collaborative environment.
- Enjoy high-impact ownership of the robotics stack, from imitation learning and simulation trade-offs to local GPU inference and ISO-certified safety integration.
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