About the role
About Preload
Preload builds the data layer for physical AI. Robots learn mostly from video, but human interaction is much richer: touch, force, and muscle activity. We build a wearable multimodal stack (egocentric video, tactile gloves, EMG) to capture how people actually interact with the physical world, and turn it into datasets robotics teams can train on. We're a YC (F26) team of PhD founders from Johns Hopkins and Caltech with backgrounds at Neuralink, Paradromics, and other neurotech companies.
The role
You'll own the software end to end: from the apps that capture data on our wearables, to the pipelines that store, process, and serve large multimodal datasets.
What you'll do
- Build data collection software that syncs video, tactile, and EMG streams from our devices
- Build tools that field teams use to run collection sessions reliably
- Design ingestion pipelines, storage, and metadata/labeling systems in the cloud
- Build APIs and tooling to deliver datasets to ML teams and customers
- Own reliability, monitoring, and scaling as collection grows
What we're looking for
- 2+ years as a software engineer building backend or data systems
- Strong Python; experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP) and data pipelines
- Comfortable working close to hardware: device communication, streaming, timestamps
- Experience with large video or sensor datasets is a plus
- Experience with embedded, mobile, or robotics software is a plus
Why join
Early, in-person team in San Francisco. You'll be the first dedicated engineer on our data platform.
About Preload
Designing and iterating a multimodal hardware stack (currently ego + tactile gloves + EMG) to collect rich and scalable datasets for physical AI. Also interested in how we can use this technology to advance surgery.
Built by PhD founders (Johns Hopkins, Caltech) with world-class expertise in brain-computer interfaces (Neuralink, Meta, Paradromics)
Required skills
Other roles at Preload
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San Francisco, CAFull-timeRobotics Scientist (Policy Learning)
San Francisco, CAFull-timeSensor Engineer (Wearables)
San Francisco, CAFull-timeField Engineer, Surgical Data Collection
San Francisco, CAFull-timeField Engineer, Data Collection Operations
San Francisco, CAFull-time
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Job details
Salary
$150,000 - $225,000
Equity
0.25% - 1.5%
Location
San Francisco, CA
Experience
2+ years
Founders
Leo Li
What happens next.
No applications, no recruiter spam. Just the intro.
Confirm the fit
A few questions to make sure this role is the right shape for you. Two minutes.
I pitch you to the company
I write the intro, send it to the founder, and handle the back-and-forth.
A meeting lands on your calendar
If they’re a yes, I book the chat. You show up — that’s the whole job-hunt.