VP, Teleportation
Teleportation is impossible. We're doing it anyway, one sense at a time.
About the role
Our operators put on an exoskeleton and a headset in one place and do skilled physical work in another. They see in stereo, they feel the forces the robot meets, and their arm is where the robot's arm is. When it works, they stop thinking about the robot. When it doesn't, they notice every millisecond.
You'll own that feeling. As VP, Teleportation, you're responsible for the whole human experience of being somewhere else:
- what operators see, hear and feel
- how their bodies map onto the robot
- how quickly a new operator gets good
- whether they want to come back tomorrow
You'll set the bar for presence, build the team that reaches it, and decide what we build next to raise it.
The test is simple: an electrician finishes a shift and forgets they weren't there.
What you'll do
- Define what great presence means at Mundane and how we measure it: time to competency, task success, error rate, fatigue, comfort, and the operator's own sense of being there
- Own the end-to-end operator experience across vision, force, proprioception and sound, working with our force, vision and hardware leads
- Find the moments where the illusion breaks (a latency spike, a missing force cue, an odd mapping) and lead the work to fix them
- Spend real time with operators: in our lab, on job sites, and in the exoskeleton yourself
- Turn research into product. Run fast experiments, make the call, and ship changes to real hardware
- Build and lead a team spanning human factors, interaction design and perception
- Set the roadmap from local teleoperation today to operation over real distance
- Be our public voice on presence through talks, papers and demos
What we're looking for
- A track record of shipping experiences people physically feel: XR, haptics, simulators, games, vehicles, cockpits, surgical or teleoperated robots, or musical instruments
- Deep intuition for human perception and the body, backed by rigor. You know the numbers behind latency, motion sickness and depth cues.
- Taste. You obsess over the details that make something feel right, and you can explain why to an engineer.
- Comfort leading across hardware, controls, software, research and design
- Experience building and leading teams
- High standards and a low ego. You're as happy at the bench as in the boardroom.
Unusual backgrounds welcome
Flight simulator engineers, game designers, theme park ride designers, surgical robotics UX leads, people who build instruments, racers who build their own sims. If you've made people feel they were somewhere they weren't, we want to talk.
Nice to have
- Published work in HRI, haptics, VR or perception
- Experience with teleoperation, shared autonomy or human-in-the-loop control
- Time spent in the trades or doing industrial field work
About Mundane
Mundane builds force-feedback teleoperation for dangerous, hands-on work. A skilled tradesperson wears our exoskeleton and works through a robot on site, seeing in stereo and feeling the forces it meets, from outside the hazard. We're starting with energized electrical work and expanding across the trades. Every job also produces the force-rich data that robot learning is missing. We're a small, venture-backed team in Palo Alto.
Work authorization
Please tell us whether you're authorized to work in the US and whether you'll need visa sponsorship now or in the future.
Equal opportunity
Mundane is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants from every background and don't discriminate on the basis of any legally protected characteristic.