Senior Robotics Software Engineer
Ornata
| Company | Ornata |
| Category | Engineering |
| Location | Richmond |
| Remote | On-site (inferred) |
| Employment | Full-time |
| Level | Senior |
| Salary | Not stated by the employer |
| Posted | 21 Jul 2026 |
| Last verified | 4 Aug 2026 |
| Source | Employer ATS (workable) |
Description
About Ornata Ornata is building the remote operations platform for agriculture. We help farms operate machinery without a human in the cab, using the equipment they already own. Our service combines retrofit autonomy hardware, remote operators, AI, and operational systems to unlock the benefits of autonomy for every farm. We are working with some of Australia's leading broadacre farming businesses and are now building the operational foundations required to scale safely, reliably, and repeatably. About the role We are looking for a Senior Robotics Software Engineer to design and own the embedded and edge software that keeps autonomous tractors operating safely and reliably in the field. You will work closely with operators and the engineering team to understand how our machines behave in real conditions, then independently drive robust technical solutions. This is a hands-on senior role centred on safety-critical systems, fault tolerance, and resilient autonomy in demanding outdoor environments. You will report directly to the CTO and help shape the future of Ornata's autonomy stack. Your software will directly control heavy machinery working in the paddock, so engineering excellence, safety, and reliability sit at the heart of everything you do. What you'll do - Design and implement tractor safety systems — failsafes, watchdogs, redundancy strategies, and recovery behaviours. - Develop and maintain high-reliability software running on edge devices and microcontrollers, with a focus on uptime and deterministic behaviour. - Contribute to localisation, path planning, and control systems that operate reliably across variable terrain and environmental conditions. - Design and implement perception pipelines using LiDAR, cameras, and other onboard sensors, and build robust sensor fusion for localisation, obstacle detection, and environmental understanding in dynamic field conditions. - Design and maintain robust communication pipelines between field hardware and cloud services, including telemetry and command pathways. - Build automated unit, integration, and simulation-based test frameworks, and lead hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing to validate behaviour across real sensors and actuators. - Implement logging, telemetry, and on-device diagnostics to support safe deployment and rapid field debugging. What success looks like In the first 90 days, you will understand Ornata's autonomy stack, how our machines behave in the field, and where the reliability and safety risks sit — and you will be shipping improvements to the edge software with confidence. Over the first 12 months, success means the on-machine software is more reliable, safer, and easier to debug in the field: safety mechanisms you can trust, perception and control that hold up across variable terrain, and test and observability frameworks that let the team deploy changes to heavy machinery with confidence.