Senior/Staff Systems Engineer

queueinc · Newark

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About Us

We're Queue, the world's first fully autonomous robotic pharmacy. We go from sealed wholesale bottles to filled, verified prescription vials with zero human involvement.

We built Queue because no one should ever have to wait in line for the medicines they need. One in three US pharmacies has shut down. Pharmacists are overworked to a breaking point. And patients are paying the price. Queue fixes that. Pharmacists get to practice pharmacy again — counseling patients, catching interactions, doing the work only they can do. And patients get their prescriptions in 60 seconds or less, any time, anywhere.

We're backed by over $18 million from Alleycorp, Riot Ventures, Ubiquity Ventures, House Capital, and others who believe the pharmacy system is broken and that robotics can fix it. Queue was founded by Nick Desai (6x founder, previously CEO of Heal) and Joshua Liu (previously Tesla, Waymo, and Zipline).

About the Role

You'll help architect a mission-critical autonomous robotic system and drive decisions at the intersection of hardware, software, business and customer needs. You'll guide cross-functional teams through a systems lens — using rigorous, data-driven analysis to sharpen execution. And you'll own the question that matters most: does the system actually do the right thing, safely, in a real pharmacy, for real patients? Together, we'll scale our robots to high-volume production and bring reliable pharmacy automation to patients nationwide.

This is a senior level role. You'll set the bar for system performance and safety, and your judgment will shape the company as we scale from pilot sites to nationwide deployment.

What You'll Own

System Architecture & Technical Leadership

• Own the end-to-end architecture, defining requirements, interfaces, and performance budgets

• Act as the technical integrator across hardware, software, autonomy, operations, and pharmacy teams

• Resolve ambiguity through structured analysis and clear decision making

• Balance performance, reliability, manufacturability, cost, and customer/unit-economic constraints

Model-Driven Tradeoffs

• Build and maintain system-level models for performance, throughput, reliability and cost

• Apply first-principles reasoning, simulation, and quantitative trade studies to architectural decisions

• Update assumptions and margins as manufacturing and field data come in

Safety & Risk

• Own system-level hazard analysis and risk management, from identification through mitigation and residual-risk closure

• Define safety requirements and controls, interlocks, and checks that enforce them

• Lead FMEA and root-cause analysis; drive corrective action to closure

• Hold the bar for patient safety, dispensing accuracy, and real-world robustness

Validation & Field Performance

• Own the system validation strategy: prove the system meets user, pharmacy, and patient needs in realistic operating conditions, not just written requirements

• Design and run validation campaigns

• Define the metrics and acceptance criteria that determine readiness for initial builds and for scale

• Instrument the fleet, analyze field data, and feed what you learn back into requirements, models, and design

• Partner with operators and customers to understand how the system is actually used and where it breaks

Qualifications / Experiences

Must Have:

• 8+ years of engineering experience on complex products

• Deep expertise in system architecture, design trades, requirements definition, and interface design

• Experience owning validation of complex systems in realistic or field conditions, including defining acceptance criteria

• Hands-on experience with hazard analysis, risk management, and FMEA on safety-relevant systems

• Fluency across hardware, software, controls, and operations, with deep knowledge in one or more of: electronics, embedded software, distributed software, mechatronics, or mechanical systems

• Ability to reason rigorously about cost, scaling, and unit economics

• First-principles thinker who is data-driven, decisive under uncertainty, and operates with high ownership and low ego

Nice to Have:

• Experience in safety or mission critical industries

• Experience working directly with customers, operators, or regulators during development and delivery

• Experience analyzing field or fleet data to find and close reliability and safety gaps

• Hands-on experience with complex electromechanical and software systems in the lab or in the field

• Hands-on experience in a manufacturing environment

• Experience with autonomous systems from development to fleet deployment

How We Hire

1. Recruiter Screen: (30 min)

2. Manager Interview/Technical (90 min)

3. Technical Interview: (60 min)

4. Leadership Interview: (60 min)

What We Offer

• Early-stage equity in automated pharmacy dispensing at scale

• Direct impact — your work helps put medication safely in patients’ hands

• Small team, zero bureaucracy, high trust

• Hard problems: distributed systems, safety-critical software, regulatory compliance, real-time hardware integration

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive salary

• Meaningful early-stage equity

• Health, 401(k), unlimited PTO

Why Join Us Now?

• Impact & Growth

  • Direct Patient Impact: Your work will improve healthcare outcomes for millions of patients

  • Market Leadership: Ground-floor opportunity to define an entirely new category of healthcare technology

  • Technical Innovation: Work on genuinely novel problems at the intersection of AI, robotics, and healthcare

  • Career Acceleration: High-visibility role with significant growth potential as the company scales

• Team and Culture

  • World-Class Team: Work alongside exceptional engineers, AI researchers, and healthcare experts

  • Reports to the Head of Systems Engineering with significant autonomy and influence

  • Innovation Focus: Culture that prioritizes breakthrough thinking and rapid experimentation

  • Mission-Driven: Team united around the goal of transforming healthcare through technology

Our Values

• Servant Leadership: Make those around you better. We serve our teams the way Queue serves communities: 4,000 pharmacies close each year and deserts are spreading - we’re here to reverse that.

• Do the Hard Things: Healthcare, hardware, and company-building are all hard. We do them anyway. Convenience for us is life-changing for those we serve.

• Own Your Work: Be accountable; take pride in what you ship. Queue lives and dies by what you do - own it fully.

• Default is Now: There’s never a better time than today. Default to action: what can we prove, learn, or simplify right now?

Contact: If you have any questions, please contact us at careers@queue.inc

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