Software Engineer — Robotics Platform, DE (m/w/d)

About CeiliX

CeiliX builds ceiling-based mobile robots for warehouse and factory logistics — the first of their kind, with productive systems at customers in the EU and USA. The company consists of approx. 10 people, has over €800k in pre-orders for 2026, and has just won an industry award. So far, two engineers have written the majority of the platform software, and one of them is now moving to other topics — which is why Robin, who is responsible for the software here, is looking for someone by his side.

The Work

Your first focus is the localization system. The robot orients itself by reading QR tags on the ceiling: an upward-facing camera decodes a global position from each tag, which is then fused with motor odometry. The system is already running at customers and at trade shows — the immediate task is to make this system robust and prepare it for scaling.

In practice, this touches a few interconnected components:

• The C/C++ runtime on Real-Time Linux, which controls the camera and outputs a position.
• The tooling and database around tag production and serialization.
• The mapping layer, which turns a customer installation into a usable map.
• Camera calibration.

Once localization is stable — Robin estimates a few months — the rest of the platform will open up. Motion control, industrial protocols like Profinet, MQTT, and ROS, fleet coordination across multiple robots, and the backend behind the customer-facing web UI will all be on the table. What you work on next will depend on what the product needs and how you grow into the work. The longer-term picture: You will take over central parts of the Skybot software as Robin hands off topics.

You will also be on the road occasionally — visiting customer installations and trade shows to debug the live system and roll out fixes on-site.

You report to Robin, but he expects you to take ownership of your topics.

Must Have

• 2+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a substantial portion of hardware-related work (firmware, embedded, robotics, microcontrollers).
• Strong C/C++ (low-level, performance-critical) and Golang (backend, interfaces).
• Hands-on Linux – terminal-proficient, on-device debugging (ARM target a plus).
• Proficiency at the bit and byte level – process boundaries, real-time vs. non-real-time, deterministic timing.
• Basic electrical engineering – connect a new sensor and connect it to a power source, read a datasheet, work with digital I/Os (switch relays, read discrete signals).
• Learning agility – quickly acquire new topics (industrial protocols, control engineering, a new toolchain) and unblock yourself.
• Independence – you are not blocked if ChatGPT doesn't know the answer.
• Work authorization for the EU.
• On-site in Euskirchen, 4 out of 5 days per week.
• Willingness to travel within the EU (occasionally further): customer deployments and trade fairs.
• Fluent German – the main working language of the team.

Nice to Have

• Microcontrollers or comparable low-level hardware/software work.
• Industrial automation – PLC (Structured Text, IEC 61131-3), Profinet, MQTT, ROS. Learnable on the job.
• gRPC – the bridge between real-time runtime and platform backend.
• Release management or software project planning.
• Computer Vision / Camera Calibration.
• JavaScript for occasional frontend work (AI-assisted is okay).

Why this role

• Responsibility from day one – localization end-to-end, then platform topics.
• 2–3 year perspective – You will take over important parts of the Skybot software as Robin hands off topics.
• Hardware-close work – Debugging on the actual robot; you see your code live at customers in real applications.
• Demand – over €800k in pre-orders against €300k planned; inbound exceeds our capacity.
• Architecture is open – the platform decisions for the next two years are on the table.

Application

Send us relevant documents – we will get in touch if it's a fit!