Directeur Technique & Co-Fondateur / Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder
Wisemotion Robotics
Montreal, Quebec, Canada (Hybrid)
Full Time
About the Role
Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder
Wisemotion — Montreal, QC (Hybrid)
About Wisemotion
Wisemotion is an early-stage AI robotics company building the next generation of motion planning technology. Our AI-powered planner produces smooth, optimal, and collision-free trajectories in milliseconds — enabling robots to be deployed faster and scaled across industrial manipulators, palletizing robots, mobile platforms, and humanoids. Founded in 2024 in Montreal and built on technology developed at Purdue University, Wisemotion secured a $800K pre-seed investment and is assembling its founding team.
The Opportunity
Industrial robotics is at an inflection point. North American manufacturers are short millions of workers, reshoring is driving the largest wave of new automation in a generation, and 95% of U.S. manufacturers plan to deploy new robots by 2028. The robots themselves are landing — global stock has more than doubled in a decade. The software that makes them economically viable to deploy and re-deploy has not kept up.
Machine builders and integrators are the ones feeling it. We've spoken with palletizing specialists, packaging machine builders, and system integrators and the message is consistent — programming and integration now accounts for ~60% of every robot project cost. Every new SKU, every cell relocation, every gripper swap forces a restart. Operators are forced to choose between scaling automation and meeting their cycle-time and margin targets. It's an impossible tradeoff.
The industry knows AI-driven motion planning is the answer — and the field has split into two camps, neither of which fits the integrator buyer. At one extreme: GPU-parallel planners that are powerful but architecturally locked to specific silicon stacks and a GPU bill of materials that doesn't fit a $40K end-of-line cell. At the other: end-to-end learning and robotics foundation models — that are data-hungry and not production-ready for a cell that has to ship next quarter. The missing middle is where the category-defining company will sit: a physics-first, hardware-agnostic motion planner that adapts in seconds, runs on edge hardware, and drops into the open robotics stacks integrators already use.
The timing has never been better — foundation-model and VLA stacks have openly conceded they need a safe, physics-consistent trajectory layer underneath them, and there's no production-ready provider of that layer today.
We're building IMP — an Intuitive Motion Planner that turns weeks of programming into a 15-minute deployment, hardware-agnostic, edge-deployable, and native to the open robotics stack. Integrators get up to 50% reduction in planning and movement time on the same hardware they already shipped. Internal benchmarks show 2× faster performance than the leading GPU-based planner with 20× less GPU memory.
The Role
As CTO and Co-Founder, you will own Wisemotion's technology vision and execution — driving IMP from research prototype to production-grade product, shaping the engineering culture, and leading the technical team. This is a hands-on founder role: you'll write code, design architecture, set research direction, and be directly accountable for performance, reliability, and deployability in real industrial environments.
Key Responsibilities
Technology & Product
- Define and execute the technology roadmap, translating research breakthroughs into a production-ready motion planning platform.
- Lead the evolution of IMP — from algorithm design to benchmarking, optimization, and deployment on edge hardware — keeping it hardware-agnostic and native to open robotics stacks (ROS, ROS 2, MoveIt).
- Ship the first commercial versions of IMP (SDK, APIs, integration tooling) and establish rigorous engineering practices around testing, benchmarking, and deployment.
- Define IP strategy — patent filings, trade secrets, and competitive monitoring — with the founding team.
Leadership & Business
- Recruit, mentor, and lead a multidisciplinary team across robotics, AI/ML, and software engineering.
- Partner with early customers and design partners to translate field feedback into fast product iterations.
- Work with the CEO on go-to-market priorities, fundraising, and investor communication — clearly articulating Wisemotion's technical differentiation.
What We're Looking For
- Advanced degree (MSc or PhD) in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical/Mechanical Engineering, Applied Math, or related field — or equivalent experience.
- Deep expertise in one or more of: motion planning, optimal control, trajectory optimization, robot kinematics/dynamics, AI/ML for robotics, or physics-informed neural networks.
- Strong software engineering background in C++ and/or Python, with modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, or equivalent).
- Hands-on experience with ROS/ROS 2, MoveIt, and simulation environments (Isaac Sim, Gazebo, MuJoCo, or similar).
- Proven track record taking complex technology from research prototype to deployed product, and building high-performing technical teams.
- Entrepreneurial mindset, strong communicator, and motivated by building a category-defining company from the ground up.
Nice to Have
- Experience with industrial robotics integration (palletizing, packaging, warehouse automation) or humanoid/mobile manipulation.
- Familiarity with GPU-based planners, VLAs, or robotics foundation models; contributions to open-source robotics or AI projects.
TandemLaunch is committed to building a community of excellence, equity, and diversity. We welcome applications from women, underrepresented minorities, persons with disabilities, sexual minority groups, and other candidates who will enrich our ideas and perspectives.
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About Wisemotion Robotics
Montreal, Quebec, Canada