Forward Deployed Engineer

Who we are

Arena Physica is on a mission to accelerate hardware innovation that powers human progress. Our name is inspired by Theodore Roosevelt's 'Citizenship in a Republic' speech. To us, entering the Arena means committing fully and accepting the risk of failure in pursuit of an audacious, worthy cause. We believe the future belongs to those brave enough to build it.

Our team of 50 combines AI engineering and applied physics expertise with deep experience in enterprise deployments. We're headquartered in NYC with presences in San Francisco and Los Angeles, backed by ~$90M from Initialized, Founders Fund, Goldcrest Capital, Fifth Down Capital, and Shield Capital.

If you're ready to do the most important work of your career, join us in the Arena.

What we do

At Arena Physica, we're building electromagnetic superintelligence. Our AI platform Atlas operationalizes physics-grounded intelligence to verify, debug, and optimize hardware across its lifecycle. Atlas is already trusted globally by the world's most advanced hardware companies, including AMD, Anduril, and Bausch & Lomb, for applications across R&D, integration testing, production assembly, and field repair.

About the role

As a Software Engineer at Arena Physica, you will work to help build and scale our core Atlas platform. This will include designing multi-agent systems, architecting and building multimodal agentic workflows, analyzing internet-scale datasets, evaluating, training, and fine-tuning large models, and developing new E2E features built on Arena Physica’s product stack. You will work closely with our Product and Go-To-Market teams to ensure a rapid iteration loop that incorporates customer and user feedback. You will be responsible for building scalable and performant software and experiences.

How you will contribute

• Own critical system components - Design and implement the core technical architecture behind Atlas’s advanced AI capabilities for hardware testing and optimization. Translate complex hardware-focused workflow requirements into robust, highly scalable solutions that deliver real value to engineers in industries such as semiconductors, automotive, and aerospace.
• Achieve O(1) universal retrieval - Develop and refine our large-scale data ingestion and indexing platform, ensuring constant-time latency for indexing and retrieving any hardware or test-related documentation, telemetry, or simulation results—regardless of data volume.
• Deliver Atlas in the physical world - Bring Atlas to the lab-bench by building integrations with engineering systems of record, and laboratory + test-bench hardware systems to deliver agentic control of end-to-end hardware engineering workflows.
• Drive performance optimization - Architect and implement high-throughput, low-latency pipelines that fuse cutting-edge LLMs with physics-informed deep learning models. Ensure Atlas operates efficiently at scale, leveraging real-time telemetry and historic multimodal data to optimize hardware performance.
• Champion user-centric engineering - Collaborate directly with hardware engineers and technical stakeholders to gain deep insight into their real-world testing and debugging challenges. Translate this empathy into innovative features that empower engineers to iterate faster and achieve breakthroughs in hardware design.

You have

• 5+ years of software development experience at a venture-backed startup or top technology company, with a focus on distributed systems and platform engineering.
• Proficient in building backend and distributed systems
• Demonstrated interest and familiarity with building multi-agent systems.
• Deep understanding of scalable system design, performance optimization, and resilience engineering.
• Extensive experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Skilled at analyzing complex problems, proposing innovative solutions, and communicating technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Comfortable with rapid prototyping and iterating based on user feedback.
• Self-directed and excited to take ownership of major initiatives.
• Proven track record of leading software development projects and collaborating with cross-functional teams. Strong interpersonal and communication skills to support a collaborative and inclusive work culture.
• An interest in and experience with hardware, electrical engineering, and how AI can accelerate these domains
• Work in person at Arena Physica's NYC HQ when not traveling
• Travel domestically and internationally (up to 25% of your time)

Benefits & Perks Include:

• 100% of the monthly premiums covered with Aetna medical vision, and dental insurance for you and your dependents
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Unlimited PTO
• Lunch every day from local restaurants via Sharebite
• Relocation support provided