Application Engineer (f/m/d)

<h2><strong>About TACTILIA</strong></h2><p style="min-height:1.5em">At TACTILIA, we are building the industry-ready robotic hand that closes one of the biggest gaps in Physical AI. Spun out of SCHUNK, the global market leader in gripping technology, we combine a decade of robotic-hand expertise and real industrial access with the speed and ambition of a deep-tech startup.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em">This isn't a research project waiting for its first customer. We already have a product, customers are ready to use it, and we are launching now. Your work will directly shape the electronics, actuators, and embedded systems that make that possible.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em">You will join at the moment when the hard engineering questions become real product decisions: how do we make a highly capable robotic hand reliable, manufacturable, serviceable, and simple enough to deploy on a real shop floor?</p><h2><strong>The Role</strong></h2><p style="min-height:1.5em">You are the bridge between a customer use case and our product. You take a task described on the shop floor, turn it into a working robot application, and translate what you learn back into concrete product requirements.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em">You work on humanoid and industrial platforms, in our lab and at customer sites. You are close to the hardware, responsible for making applications work in practice, and know whether a grasp still holds after ten thousand cycles.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em">You report to the CTO and work closely with Product, Software and Electronics.</p><h2><strong>What you will do:</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Use case to requirement.</strong> Analyse customer applications on site, understand their technical and operational constraints, and derive specific, testable product requirements.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Skill implementation.</strong> Implement and optimise grasping and manipulation skills on real hardware — including parameterisation, grasp strategies, task sequences and error recovery.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Testing.</strong> Design and run application-level tests covering endurance, cycle testing, grasp success rates, robustness to object and position variance, and reproducibility.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>High-level control &amp; integration.</strong> Integrate our hands into humanoid and industrial robots, including mechanical and electrical interfacing, commissioning, task-level programming and sequencing.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Teleoperation &amp; robot learning.</strong> Set up and operate teleoperation systems, record high-quality demonstrations for imitation learning, and support reinforcement-learning workflows including sim-to-real validation.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Demo setups &amp; showcases.</strong> Build reliable demonstrators for trade fairs, customer visits and pilot projects that can run repeatedly under real-world conditions.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Shop floor deployment.</strong> Take applications from the lab into production environments, addressing cycle times, safety, system interfaces and integration with existing automation.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Feedback into development.</strong> Capture field findings, failure modes and product limitations and work with Product and Engineering to translate them into concrete improvements.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Documentation &amp; enablement.</strong> Document applications, integration procedures and test results, and support customers and partners during deployment.</p></li></ul><h2><strong>What you bring:</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Degree in mechatronics, robotics, automation, mechanical or electrical engineering, or a comparable qualification.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">3–8 years of experience in robot applications, commissioning, systems integration or automation engineering.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Practical experience programming and commissioning industrial robots or cobots, with the confidence to work on live robotic cells.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Strong Python skills; C++ is an advantage.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Experience with ROS 2 and simulation environments such as Isaac Sim, Gazebo, MuJoCo or comparable platforms.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Structured approach to testing — you design tests that produce measurable, reproducible results.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Hands-on mentality — you are comfortable building fixtures, wiring systems, commissioning hardware and running tests yourself.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Willingness to travel to customer sites and trade fairs, approximately 20–30%.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Fluent in English and German.</p></li></ul><h2><strong>Bonus:</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Experience with grasping technology, end-of-arm tooling or dexterous manipulation.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Experience with teleoperation systems, motion capture or VR-based robot control.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Practical experience with imitation learning, behaviour cloning or reinforcement learning.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Experience with humanoid or mobile manipulation platforms.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Experience with machine vision and object detection in robotic applications.</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Knowledge of risk assessment and safety for collaborative applications, including the Machinery Regulation and ISO/TS 15066.</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><p style="min-height:1.5em">The next chapter of robotics won't be built in a lab. It will be built by people who care about what happens when technology meets the real world.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em">At TACTILIA, you'll work on one of the hardest open problems in robotics: giving machines the dexterity, reliability and robustness to interact with the physical world at industrial scale.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em">The technology is taking shape, the team is being built, and the standards around robotic hands and their skills are still open. That means your decisions will have a lasting impact — not just on a product, but on what comes next for Physical AI.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em"><strong>Build the hand. Define the standard. Shape what comes next.</strong></p><p style="min-height:1.5em">If you're excited by the challenge of building robotic hands that works reliably in the real world, we'd love to hear from you.</p><p>Find more <a href="https://www.arbeitnow.com/english-speaking-jobs">English Speaking Jobs in Germany</a> on Arbeitnow</a>