Freelance Robotics Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL (NOW HIRING)

Start Date: September 1st, 2026

Contract Length - 6 months with possibility to extend

Founders Factory builds and funds startups together with exceptional entrepreneurs and the world's leading companies. Headquartered in London and operating globally, Founders Factory backs visionary founders with capital, dedicated support from a team of expert operators, and unrivalled access to a coalition of industry leading corporate partners. Since 2015, FF has backed 450+ portfolio companies helping them to secure over 500 enterprise pilots with blue chip corporate partners such as Aviva, Northwestern Medicine, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, and HSBC.

We are looking for an exceptional Venture Builder who is passionate about building the future of elderly care and healthcare robotics.

Health systems globally are burdened by capacity constraints, rising chronic disease, aging populations, and escalating operational costs. Care delivery models built around physical hospitals are increasingly unsustainable, and nowhere is this more acute than in elderly care, where families and providers alike need better ways to monitor wellbeing without adding friction or invading privacy.

You’ll be working on our new venture: an autonomous robot designed to monitor elderly care patients, combining mobile sensing, radar/remote monitoring, and intelligent navigation to give caregivers real-time insight while helping seniors stay safe, independent, and supported in senior-living facilities.

As a Venture Builder, you specialise in taking ideas from zero to venture-backable businesses. You work closely with founders to shape strategy, validate problem spaces, build MVPs, and find early product market fit. This is a hands on, high ownership role. You'll operate across product, design, growth and tech, moving fast, making decisions, and focusing relentlessly on what creates the most leverage at each stage of a venture. You have a varied skill set and will have demonstrated an interest in tech and entrepreneurship. You will be an advocate for FF's values and mission and be committed to supporting founders. You are opinionated but evidence led, creative but commercial, and comfortable operating in ambiguity. You care deeply about building products people actually want and businesses that can scale.

As a Venture Builder at Founders Factory, you will gain firsthand experience in building a new business from the ground up. You can also take advantage of our Founder Fast Track Programme to help you hone your entrepreneurial skills and get you ready to found your own venture.

Please note that we are looking for Venture Builders who are available for an initial 6-12 month contract (freelance). Our preferred location is New York, but we will be open to considering hybrid approaches for exceptional talent in other cities across the country.

• Owning the end-to-end early build: from problem definition and MVP scoping through to shipping, testing, and iteration

• Getting products into users' hands fast, using lean, experimental approaches to validate assumptions and generate learning

• Shaping the customer experience and product vision, balancing user needs with commercial and technical realities

• Working closely with founders to challenge thinking, sharpen focus, and drive momentum, especially when things feel unclear or uncomfortable

• Helping ventures progress through studio stage gates, supporting founders towards strong, evidence-backed IC decisions

• Spotting opportunities early by staying close to market dynamics, emerging tech, and real user behaviour

• Communicating clearly and regularly, sharing progress, learnings, trade-offs, and recommendations with founders and the wider studio

• Demonstrated 0→1 experience in healthcare robotics, robotics-as-a-service, clinical operating systems/platforms, or elderly care technology

• Technical grounding in hardware or autonomous robots (ideally in the Med/HealthTech space) with the ability to work credibly alongside engineering teams on architecture and trade-offs

• Driving momentum by subscribing to lean methodologies and an experimental approach, you prioritise speed, learning, and focus over perfection

• Comfortable wearing multiple hats (product, design, tech, growth) and knowing when to pull in specialist support

• Strong technical mindset, with the ability to build no-code / low-code solutions, prototypes, or proofs of concept to accelerate validation

• Commercially curious with the ability to think about ICPs, value propositions, pricing hypotheses, and early GTM alongside product

• Nice-to-have exposure to SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) and wideband (WB) signal-processing IP

• Thrive in ambiguity and enjoy solving messy problems

• Quick thinking and intuition, someone who can balance creativity with objective data

• A passion for creating products people love, caring about product performance is key

• The ability to adapt and operate in an ambiguous environment

• Comfortable with taking calculated risks and learning fast

• Wanting to continuously improve your skills and productivity, challenging yourself when you can

• Strong leadership that drives outcomes

• Being approachable and optimistic

• Not a pure designer or software engineer

• Not a consultant writing decks from the sidelines

• Not a 9–5 role

Compensation Range: $80K - $94K