Instawork
About this role
Instawork runs an AI powered labour marketplace for hourly work, backed by Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock and Y Combinator. Instawork Robotics Labs exists to close what the posting calls the 100,000 year data gap: it deploys skilled workers into real kitchens, warehouses, hotel floors and homes to capture the high fidelity task data that leading robotics labs use to train their foundation models. This E4 role is the more senior of the two engineering levels the team is hiring, at 8 or more years against the E3 level's 6. You would own technical execution for that data platform, building the global data collection and quality assurance systems behind it. The posting wants a generalist explicitly: as comfortable designing a clean React interface as tuning heavy video transcoding pipelines in AWS, with deep observability across CPU, memory, network and disk IOPS.
Who this is for
What the posting requires:
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, described as being a master of fundamentals. This is the E4 level; Instawork also lists an E3 version of the same role at 6+ years.
- Full stack versatility: able to move between frontend, backend and infrastructure and own features end to end.
- Comfort designing user experience in React and diving into AWS to tune heavy video transcoding pipelines.
- Ability to architect and scale cloud environments, including complex AWS infrastructure and ECS services.
- Deep observability practice with precise telemetry across CPU, memory, network and disk IOPS.
- Ability to design and optimise data pipelines at scale.
- Strong engineering intuition and architectural expertise. The team leverages agentic coding models heavily and says it relies on human judgement to keep systems robust and built the right way.
What the work actually looks like:
- Own the technical execution for massive scale physical AI training data.
- Lead technical development of the global data collection platform and the dedicated quality assurance platform, ensuring high throughput data enrichment, labelling and continuous quality assurance loops.
- Architect and scale cloud environments, managing AWS infrastructure and ECS services for video transcoding.
- Design and optimise data pipelines capable of operating at scale.
- Act as a key engineering leader in the Bengaluru hub.
What the business actually does, since it is unusual: Instawork Robotics Labs deploys skilled hourly workers into real commercial and residential environments to capture task data, which robotics labs then use to train foundation models. The posting frames closing that data gap as the defining infrastructure challenge of the physical AI era.
Location and working pattern: Bengaluru. Office days are not stated.
Honest fit guidance: the posting asks for a generalist and means it, so specialists who have worked in one layer will struggle against the breadth requirement. Video pipeline and transcoding experience is the part most candidates lack. If you are between 6 and 8 years, apply to the E3 posting instead of stretching for this one, since both are open.
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, described as being a master of fundamentals. This is the E4 level; Instawork also lists an E3 version of the same role at 6+ years.
- Full stack versatility: able to move between frontend, backend and infrastructure and own features end to end.
- Comfort designing user experience in React and diving into AWS to tune heavy video transcoding pipelines.
- Ability to architect and scale cloud environments, including complex AWS infrastructure and ECS services.
- Deep observability practice with precise telemetry across CPU, memory, network and disk IOPS.
- Ability to design and optimise data pipelines at scale.
- Strong engineering intuition and architectural expertise. The team leverages agentic coding models heavily and says it relies on human judgement to keep systems robust and built the right way.
What the work actually looks like:
- Own the technical execution for massive scale physical AI training data.
- Lead technical development of the global data collection platform and the dedicated quality assurance platform, ensuring high throughput data enrichment, labelling and continuous quality assurance loops.
- Architect and scale cloud environments, managing AWS infrastructure and ECS services for video transcoding.
- Design and optimise data pipelines capable of operating at scale.
- Act as a key engineering leader in the Bengaluru hub.
What the business actually does, since it is unusual: Instawork Robotics Labs deploys skilled hourly workers into real commercial and residential environments to capture task data, which robotics labs then use to train foundation models. The posting frames closing that data gap as the defining infrastructure challenge of the physical AI era.
Location and working pattern: Bengaluru. Office days are not stated.
Honest fit guidance: the posting asks for a generalist and means it, so specialists who have worked in one layer will struggle against the breadth requirement. Video pipeline and transcoding experience is the part most candidates lack. If you are between 6 and 8 years, apply to the E3 posting instead of stretching for this one, since both are open.
Apply on company site
Opens job-boards.greenhouse.io, the employer's own application page. Applying is always free.