Network Engineer, Autonomous Factory

ABOUT US Foundry Robotics is building an AI-native robotics manufacturing company focused on deploying advanced assembly and production capability for leading robotics companies and national-security-critical hardware. Basically, we’re building robots that build robots. Factory OS is building software that runs factories. Our platform spans cloud backends, on-prem services, and edge devices deployed on the factory floor. The operators, supervisors, and managers who use our tools need interfaces that are fast, reliable, and intuitive—even when network conditions aren’t perfect and the environment is demanding. THE ROLE As a Network Engineer, Autonomous Factory, you’ll design and build that network from the ground up for a 130,000 sq. ft. autonomous manufacturing facility, and then own it as we scale. You’ll work across the full network stack: physical infrastructure, switching and routing, server and GPU rack fabric, segmentation between industrial and IT systems, wireless, and core services including DHCP, DNS, and time synchronization. You’ll also own the WAN and VPN edge, the overlay network engineers use to securely reach the factory floor, and the security boundaries required for ITAR and CMMC 2.0 Level 2 compliance. This is a deeply hands-on role. You’ll be in the ceiling, in the racks, and in the packet captures, while also working with engineering and manufacturing teams to design how new robotic work cells should be connected before the first one is ever built. If you want to build critical infrastructure from the ground up and have a direct role in enabling a truly autonomous factory, this is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact from day one. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Founder mentality: We love people who build like it’s their own company. You move fast, take ownership, and find a way through when the path isn’t obvious. You have the drive to make big things happen and the judgment to take smart risks along the way. If you prefer a clearly defined lane, a predictable pace, and all the answers before you start, there’s nothing wrong with that—but Foundry might not be the right fit. - Produce the network design for the factory: physical plant, logical topology, IP plan, segmentation model, redundancy, and capacity. Get it built with contractors and facilities. - Design and stand up the server and GPU rack fabric: high-speed top-of-rack, out-of-band management, storage traffic, and coordination with power and cooling. - Wire and segment robotic work cells: controllers, safety systems, fieldbus segments, edge compute, cameras, and operator stations. Make robotics middleware discovery and multicast behave. - Own the WAN and VPN edge: redundant private connectivity to the cloud that actually fails over, with monitoring that catches lost redundancy before it becomes an outage. - Run the overlay network and its interaction with the underlay. Design so overlay routing can never hijack local traffic. - Operate the core services the floor depends on: DHCP, DNS including private zones into the cloud, NTP or PTP, network access control where it fits, and firewall policy between zones. - Instrument everything. Switch, firewall, and flow telemetry land in the shared monitoring stack, and you write the runbooks. - Carry the network portion of ITAR and CMMC 2.0 Level 2: boundary protection, access control, logging, configuration management, and evidence for assessors. - Enable remote fleet operations: re-imaging, health checks, and access to cell compute without walking to the cell. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 7+ years in network engineering, including at least one greenfield or major build-out of a campus, data center, or industrial facility. - Deep routing and switching: OSPF or BGP, VLANs and VXLAN, spanning tree, LACP, QoS, multicast, and the judgment to know when not to use them. - Physical layer competence: fiber and copper plant design, cabling standards, rack and pathway planning, working with electrical and facilities trades. - Firewalls, VPN (IPsec, WireGuard), and zone-based segmentation. You have written and defended a security boundary. - Data center networking for compute racks: 25/100G top-of-rack, storage and GPU traffic patterns, out-of-band management. - Comfortable on Linux with tcpdump, iproute2, and nftables. You can debug a problem that lives between a host's routing table and a switch. - Able to document and automate: network as code, version-controlled configs, and monitoring you built yourself. STRONG PLUS - Industrial or OT networking: PLCs, EtherCAT or PROFINET, robot controllers, safety systems, IEC 62443 concepts. - ROS 2 / DDS on real networks, including multicast discovery. - WireGuard-based overlays at scale and the underlay/overlay interaction problems that come with them. - AWS networking: VPC, Transit Gateway, Site-to-Site VPN or Direct Connect, private DNS. - Video and camera networks with high camera counts and bandwidth planning. - PTP or other precision time sync for robotics or measurement. - Prior work under ITAR, CMMC, or NIST SP 800-171, ideally producing assessment evidence. WHY JOIN US? This is one of the only places where world-class manufacturing operators, mechanical engineers, robotics researchers, and software engineers sit in the same room — building production systems together. We are committed to being deeply embedded in the U.S. industrial base. Our focus is simple: build adaptive robotic assembly systems that make American manufacturing scalable, resilient, and competitive again. If you want to run a mature, well-defined commercial org, this may not be the role. If you want to build the commercial engine that brings AI-driven manufacturing to every industrial and energy customer in America — this is it. The base salary range for this full-time position in the location of Emeryville is: $150,000—$250,000 USD Compensation packages at Foundry Robotics for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position, determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Foundry Robotics employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, and generous PTO. Foundry Robotics is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.