As a Principal Software Engineer, you'll enhance system reliability by leading root-cause analysis, developing hotfixes, and mentoring team members, while refining the engineering strategy for sustaining software in production.
About The Job
At Berkshire Grey, our robots run 24/7 in e-commerce and logistics environments. As a Software Sustaining Engineer, you’ll be a go-to expert for keeping our codebase performant in production environments - driving improvements in mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to recovery (MTTR), and Availability/Uptime. You’ll partner with developers, QA, DevOps and field service to turn production data into actionable fixes, then develop and shepherd patches from code review into customer deployments.
This role is ideal for someone who excels at root-cause analysis, works seamlessly across teams, and is driven to strengthen system reliability.
Responsibilities
- Lead investigation of field and lab failures; own root-cause analysis and drive fixes
- Instrument code with metrics/logs; develop health checks and self-healing routines
- Design, build, test, and deploy hotfixes and maintenance releases
- Identify recurring issues; propose and implement design or process changes to raise MTBF and lower MTTR
- Work with development teams to bake reliability into new features; train support teams on diagnostics
- Maintain clear runbooks; track and report on reliability KPIs
- Define and drive our sustaining engineering strategy and architecture
- Mentor and coach other sustaining engineers on best practices for reliability and incident response
- Collaborate with product leadership to integrate reliability objectives into the product roadmap
- Own the development and scaling of our platform-monitoring, tracing, and alerting
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, or related field
- 10+ years in software development or reliability engineering
- Strong coding skills in Python
- Experience in a fast-paced, agile environment
- Demonstrated ability to:
- Investigate and triage production issues end-to-end
- Analyze logs, metrics, and telemetry to pinpoint root causes
- Develop fixes or workarounds under tight SLAs
- Ship stable patches and rollouts with minimal disruption
- Drive post-mortems and follow-through on corrective action plans
- Communicate status and technical tradeoffs clearly to stakeholders
- Comfortable with:
- Linux (Ubuntu)
- Version control (Git)
- Issue tracking (Jira)
Preferred Qualifications
- Master’s degree in CS, Robotics, or related field
- Familiarity with:
- Monitoring stacks (Elastic/Kibana, Prometheus/Grafana)
- Distributed in-code tracing frameworks (OpenTelemetry)
- Container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
- Automated test frameworks (pytest, unit/system tests)
- Chaos engineering and resilience testing methodologies
- Hands-on experience with robotic applications or other high-uptime systems
- Data-driven mindset: profiling, statistics, pandas
Why Berkshire Grey?
- Opportunity to work with cutting-edge AI-powered robotic solutions that are transforming the supply chain and logistics industry.
- A culture of innovation and collaboration, with a commitment to professional development and growth.
- Competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits package.
6111-2502MS
Top Skills
Docker
Elastic
Git
Grafana
JIRA
Kibana
Kubernetes
Linux (Ubuntu)
Opentelemetry
Pandas
Prometheus
Pytest
Python
Berkshire Grey Bedford, Massachusetts, USA Office
140 South Road, Bedford, MA, United States, 01730
Similar Jobs
Cloud • Computer Vision • Information Technology • Sales • Security • Cybersecurity
This role focuses on enhancing UI accessibility in CrowdStrike's front-end framework, ensuring compliance with accessibility standards, auditing, and cross-functional collaboration.
Top Skills:
AxeCSSEmberGoogle LighthouseGraphQLHTMLJavaScriptLitNext.JsNode/NpmReactRest ApiTypescriptVueWeb Components
Aerospace • Artificial Intelligence • Hardware • Robotics • Security • Software • Defense
As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll lead a team developing software for autonomous underwater vehicles, focusing on code optimization, architecture design, and cross-domain autonomy solutions.
Top Skills:
C++GoLinuxPythonRust
Artificial Intelligence • Professional Services • Business Intelligence • Consulting • Cybersecurity • Generative AI
Lead design and development of scalable applications, mentor junior developers, and utilize advanced technologies for innovation in the logistics sector.
Top Skills:
AgileAWSAzureCi/CdDevOpsGCPJava
What you need to know about the Boston Tech Scene
Boston is a powerhouse for technology innovation thanks to world-class research universities like MIT and Harvard and a robust pipeline of venture capital investment. Host to the first telephone call and one of the first general-purpose computers ever put into use, Boston is now a hub for biotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence — though it’s also home to several B2B software giants. So it’s no surprise that the city consistently ranks among the greatest startup ecosystems in the world.
Key Facts About Boston Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 269,000; 9.4% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Thermo Fisher Scientific, Toast, Klaviyo, HubSpot, DraftKings
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, software, aerospace
- Funding Landscape: $15.7 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Summit Partners, Volition Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, MassVentures, Highland Capital Partners
- Research Centers and Universities: MIT, Harvard University, Boston College, Tufts University, Boston University, Northeastern University, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, National Bureau of Economic Research, Broad Institute, Lowell Center for Space Science & Technology, National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories
