[Hiring] Field Engineering Technician @Chef Robotics

Role Description

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:

• Diagnose root causes, repair, and tune module configurations via HMI.
• Work on-site at customer facilities across your region, partnering with customer operations teams.
• Perform repairs and preventative maintenance, validate fixes, and tune modules for each customer’s ingredients, containers, and line conditions.
• Travel to customer sites outside of your region for deployments and service.
• Supported remotely by Robotic Operations Engineers, Systems Reliability Engineers, and Forward Deployment Engineers.
• Provide first-hand field data for Engineering to help turn recurring failures into permanent fixes.

The environment of our customers is in a food manufacturing setting, occasionally refrigerated with washdown procedures present. Candidates should be willing to spend longer hours in these environments.

This role offers 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. 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 region, with travel to customer facilities as needed (up to ~50%).

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; 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.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to provide actionable, evidence-backed feedback to Engineering.
• 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.

Requirements

• Perform field repairs and diagnostics on Chef modules across mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, sensor, and controls systems.
• Tune and validate module configurations and parameters through the HMI to improve throughput, accuracy, and uptime.
• Use logs, fleet data, and on-site observation to separate configuration, hardware, and software causes.
• Provide structured feedback to the Engineering team regarding recurring failure modes, serviceability, and design issues.
• 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 field learnings.
• 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 findings, changes, and expectations.
• Follow customer site safety, food safety, and lockout/tagout requirements at all times.