Field Engineering Technician

Chef Robotics is the market leader in physical AI for the food industry — deploying AI-powered robots that solve one of the country's largest, most urgent labor shortages. Our fleet has produced over 110 million real meals across a dozen customer facilities in North America and Europe, for customers like Amy’s Kitchen, gategroup, and CookUnity, and every one of those meals trains our AI further. Backed by leading investors, we've proven the hardest part in robotics — real-world deployment at scale — and now we're looking for people who want to build what comes after.

About the Role

Chef Robotics is seeking a Field Engineering Technician to keep our deployed robotic food-portioning modules performing at their best at customer food production sites. This is a hands-on, technical role: we are looking for a tech who diagnoses root causes, repairs,  tunes module configurations via HMI, and carries what they learn in the field back to our Engineering teams.
In this role, you will work on-site at customer facilities across your region, partnering with customer operations teams to understand issues, perform repairs and preventative maintenance, validate fixes, and tune modules for each customer’s ingredients, containers, and line conditions. You will also travel to customer sites outside of your region for deployments at new customers or service for customers out of region. You will be supported remotely by our Robotic Operations Engineers, Systems Reliability Engineers, and Forward Deployment Engineers and you will be a first-hand source of field data for Engineering, helping turn recurring failures into permanent fixes.
The environment of our customers are in a food manufacturing environment, occasionally refrigerated with washdown procedures present. Candidates are willing to spend longer hours in these environments.
This is an opportunity to use your technical depth and curiosity for robotics while having a direct impact on customer uptime, Chef’s revenue stream, and the design of our next-generation products. If you are excited about working in a customer-facing role on hard technical problems and you thrive in the fast-paced, dynamic environment of an early-stage startup, we’d love to hear from you. Please note that this is a customer-facing role and schedules follow customer production, which may include early mornings, weekends, and off-hours.
Location: Regional, based in LA or NY region, with travel to customer facilities as needed (up to ~50%).

What You'll Do

• Perform field repairs and diagnostics on Chef modules across mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, sensor, and controls systems, and drive to the root cause rather than stopping at the failed part
• Tune and validate module configurations and parameters through the HMI to improve throughput, accuracy, and uptime for each customer’s ingredients, containers, and line conditions, changing one variable at a time and recording what worked
• Use logs, fleet data, and on-site observation to separate configuration, hardware, and software causes, and escalate to Systems Reliability Engineers with evidence rather than symptoms
• Provide structured feedback to the Engineering team: recurring failure modes, serviceability and design issues, configuration learnings, and customer needs seen in the field
• Execute preventative maintenance on schedule and document wear trends and findings
• Run testing for new meals and new ingredients: set up, tune, record results, and recommend settings
• Track and log hardware requests, part numbers, and part quantities using the hardware request workflow
• Write and improve runbooks, work instructions, and troubleshooting guides based on what you learn in the field
• Coordinate with 3P technicians at customer sites and guide customer operators on day-to-day care and handling of the modules
• Communicate clearly with customer operations teams about what you found, what you changed, and what to expect
• Follow customer site safety, food safety, and lockout/tagout requirements at all times

Qualifications:

• 2-5 years of hands-on experience maintaining, troubleshooting, or commissioning automated equipment (robotics, mechatronics, industrial automation, packaging, or food-processing machinery)
• Comfortable with electrical and mechanical troubleshooting: reading schematics, using a multimeter, and working with sensors, motors, drives, and pneumatics
• Experience with HMIs, PLCs, or equipment parameter configuration, and the discipline to change a setting, observe the result, and iterate methodically. Linux experience preferred.
• A systematic problem solver who forms hypotheses, isolates variables, and documents findings so others can reproduce them
• Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to give Engineering actionable, evidence-backed feedback
• Comfortable with laptops, logs, and data tools; basic Linux or command-line experience is a plus
• Associate degree or technical certification in mechatronics, electronics, robotics, or a related field, or equivalent experience
• Able to travel regionally and work in food production environments, including wash-down, cold, and noisy areas, with PPE

Compensation

The base pay range for this role is $83,000 – $115,000 per year.
Chef is an early-stage startup where equity is a major part of the compensation package. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position. Within the range, individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.
In addition to salary and early-stage equity, we offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, dental, and vision insurance, commuter benefits, flexible paid time off (PTO), catered lunch, and 401(k) matching.