
Lead Forward Deployed Engineer, Robotics Fleet Software
Posted 3 days ago
The role in short
Manage a team of Forward Deployed Engineers responsible for embedding with Tesla factory sites to deploy, validate, and hand off production robotics fleet software and integrations.
What to Expect
Tesla’s Factory Automation Robotics team builds software that controls mobile robots and coordinates material flow across robot fleets, conveyors and automated storage and retrieval systems. You will manage the site forward deployed engineers who bring these products into production across Tesla factories. You will staff projects, set delivery commitments and coach engineers through commissioning and handoff. You and your engineers will regularly brief executives on site readiness, performance against production targets and decisions that need their attention.
This position is based in Austin, TX, with approximately 25% travel to Tesla factories. Site Forward Deployed Engineers report to this role.
What You'll Do
- Hire, onboard and manage site software engineers and coach them to own technical decisions and deployment outcomes
- Allocate engineers across sites and negotiate delivery commitments based on capacity, dependencies and production priorities
- Review process assumptions with factory teams and lead virtual commissioning, factory acceptance testing and site validation against throughput and recovery targets
- Brief executives regularly on readiness, risks and decisions needed and coach site engineers to present results and recovery plans directly
- Train operations and sustaining teams to handle routine faults and establish escalation paths for software investigations and production changes
- Coach engineers through failures across software and equipment and guide them in building diagnostic tools, reviewing fixes and validating recovery on the line
- Decide which changes site engineers can deliver and work with product management and development on improvements that apply across factories
What You'll Bring
- 6+ years of relevant engineering experience including hands-on software commissioning across multiple material handling deployments and at least one autonomous mobile robot (AMR) fleet deployment through site acceptance
- Experience writing and reviewing production integration code that connects manufacturing execution systems (MES) or warehouse software to equipment controls
- People management experience hiring and developing engineers who take ownership of factory launches
- Experience validating simulation assumptions and testing throughput, reliability and fault recovery on physical equipment
- Experience allocating engineering capacity across simultaneous deployments and negotiating commitments with factory teams
- Experience briefing executives on production performance and coaching engineers to present technical decisions and tradeoffs
- Experience training operations teams, documenting recovery procedures and leading software escalations after handoff
Benefits
Along with competitive pay, as a full-time Tesla employee, you are eligible for the following benefits at day 1 of hire:
- Medical plans > plan options with $0 payroll deduction
- Family-building, fertility, adoption and surrogacy benefits
- Dental (including orthodontic coverage) and vision plans, both have options with a $0 paycheck contribution
- Company Paid (Health Savings Accounts) HSA Contribution when enrolled in the High-Deductible medical plan with HSA
- Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
- 401(k) with employer match, Employee Stock Purchase Plans, and other financial benefits
- Company paid Basic Life, AD&D
- Short-term and long-term disability insurance (90 day waiting period)
- Employee Assistance Program
- Sick and Vacation time (Flex time for salary positions, Accrued hours for Hourly positions), and Paid Holidays
- Back-up childcare and parenting support resources
- Voluntary benefits to include: critical illness, hospital indemnity, accident insurance, theft & legal services, and pet insurance
- Weight Loss and Tobacco Cessation Programs
- Tesla Babies program
- Commuter benefits
- Employee discounts and perks program
- Earned Wage Access: Real-time pay access paid daily, subject to eligibility and schedule (applicable for below Sr. Managers levels)
Tesla is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action employer committed to diversity in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, gender identity or any other factor protected by applicable federal, state or local laws.
Tesla is also committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. Please let your recruiter know if you need an accommodation at any point during the interview process.
Prep for this interview
3 questions likely to come up at Tesla, each matched to a line in this posting.
- 1Integrations and APIs
They wrote: “Experience writing and reviewing production integration code that connects manufacturing execution systems (MES) or warehouse software to equipment controls”
Walk me through connecting our product to a customer's internal system that has no documentation.
How to answer
Why they ask: This happens weekly in the job. They want a calm, step-by-step method.
- Find who owns the system and get read access to a test environment
- Watch real traffic or logs to learn the data shapes
- Build a thin adapter with logging around every call
- Agree on how failures get reported, and who fixes what
Tip: Talk about finding the owner of the system first. The code is the easy part.
- 2Ownership and working with customers
They wrote: “People management experience hiring and developing engineers who take ownership of factory launches”
Tell me about something you shipped that broke in production.
How to answer
Why they ask: Everyone has broken production. They want to hear you own it and change something afterwards.
- What broke and who it affected
- How you found out and what you did in the first hour
- The root cause, said plainly
- What you changed so it can't happen the same way again
Tip: Pick a real one with a cost. Spend most of the answer on what you changed.
- 3Travel
They wrote: “This position is based in Austin, TX, with approximately 25% travel to Tesla factories. Site Forward Deployed Engineers report to this role.”
How do you handle being on the road with customers for weeks at a time?
How to answer
Why they ask: Many FDE roles involve regular travel. They check you know what you're signing up for.
- Your past travel or on-site experience
- How you stay productive away from the team
- What travel level works for you, said plainly
Tip: Be honest about what works for you. A mismatch here hurts both sides later.
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