Data Platform Engineer, Infrastructure

FieldAI’s Irvine team is where embodied AI meets real robots, real sensors, and real field deployments. Based in the heart of Southern California’s robotics ecosystem, we build risk-aware, reliable, field-ready AI systems that solve the hardest problems in robotics and unlock the full potential of embodied intelligence. If you want your work to ship, get tested on hardware, and improve through real deployments, Irvine is the place. We go beyond typical data-driven approaches or pure transformer-only architectures, combining rigorous engineering with learning systems proven in globally deployed solutions that deliver results today and get better every time our robots run in the field. About the Job As a Data Platform Engineer, Infrastructure, you will build and run the foundation the rest of the data platform stands on: the lakehouse, the compute and orchestration platforms, access control, and the deploy and observability tooling. Your work decides whether our pipelines and analytics are fast, secure, affordable and up when the fleet needs them. About the Data Platform Team Every robot we deploy generates a continuous stream of telemetry, sensor logs and operational data from environments around the world. The Data Platform team builds the systems that store, govern and serve that data to autonomy, ML, field operations and customers. What You'll Get To Do Design and operate our AWS lakehouse: S3, Glue catalog, Athena, Iceberg tables, and table maintenance (compaction, snapshots, retention) Own data access and governance across accounts: Lake Formation, IAM, cross-account sharing, and least-privilege access for people and services Run the platforms the team builds on: Airflow, Kubernetes services, Superset, and the data catalog Manage everything as code (Terraform, Helm, ArgoCD) with CI/CD for data services Build observability for the platform: metrics, logs, alerting and on-call runbooks Track and reduce storage and compute cost as data volume grows with the fleet Set the standards other engineers follow for security, reliability and deployment What You Have Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field 3–5+ years in data infrastructure, platform, DevOps or SRE roles Deep hands-on AWS experience (S3, IAM, Glue/Athena or equivalent, networking) Infrastructure as code (Terraform or CloudFormation) and Kubernetes in production Strong Python and shell; solid SQL Experience running production systems with monitoring, incident response and postmortems Experience building platform products that make developers' lives easier: you see which pieces of infrastructure teams keep needing, package them into reusable building blocks (storage, IAM roles, permissions, pipeline wiring in one step), and make the whole company faster The Extras That Set You Apart Experience with Lake Formation or another data governance layer, and multi-account AWS setups Experience with Iceberg, Delta or Hudi at scale Experience operating Airflow, Trino/Spark, or a BI platform Experience with petabyte-scale sensor or media storage (point clouds, video) and lifecycle policies Our salary range is generous and we consider each individual’s background and experience when determining final compensation. Base pay may vary based on role scope, job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and the Irvine, California market. Why Join FieldAI in Irvine? In Irvine, you will work where the robots are. Our local team builds and tests systems on real hardware with real sensors, then ships them to operate in unstructured, previously unknown environments around the world. We are solving one of robotics’ hardest challenges: reliable deployment outside the lab. Our Field Foundational Models™ raise the bar for perception, planning, localization, and manipulation, with an emphasis on explainability and safety for real-world use. You will collaborate with a world-class team that thrives on creativity, resilience, and bold thinking. We bring deep experience from organizations such as DeepMind, NASA JPL, Boston Dynamics, NVIDIA, Amazon, Tesla Autopilot, Cruise, Zoox, Toyota Research Institute, and SpaceX, along with a track record of field deployments and strong performance in DARPA challenge segments. Be Part of the Next Robotics Revolution We are looking for builders who want their work to leave the whiteboard and show up on robots. If you enjoy tackling tough, uncharted questions and working across disciplines, you will find your people here. Our teams span AI, software, robotics engineering, product, field deployment, and technical communication, all focused on shipping systems that perform in the real world. Our headquarters is in Irvine, and we partner closely with teams there as well as colleagues across the US and around the world. Join us in Southern California and help define what dependable, field-ready autonomy looks like. We value diverse perspectives and are committed to fostering an inclusive workplace. We evaluate candidates and employees based on merit, qualifications, and performance, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, national origin, ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, or any other legally protected status.